


Your Princess is in Another Castle

by Anthemyst



Series: Generations Past and Future [3]
Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: F/M, Rating for Language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-27
Updated: 2016-11-03
Packaged: 2018-08-18 05:54:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 31,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8151359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anthemyst/pseuds/Anthemyst
Summary: Four years ago, the wife of Gabriel Agreste went missing in Tibet. Though the people who loved her searched high and low, no trace of her was ever found.Turns out they were looking on the wrong side of the world.Now she's been found, but she's still trapped in the clutches of the evil cult she once saved the world from-and only Ladybug and Chat Noir can save her.





	1. Prologue

Ariel Garcia looked out the bus window, at the seemingly endless Sonoran Desert, and wondered idly if she’d be alive by this time tomorrow.

“Nervous?” her seatmate asked. Ariel turned towards her and shrugged, smiling a little.

“Yeah, aren’t we all?”

“It’ll be fine,” her seatmate said confidently. She held her hand out. “I’m Rachel,” she said, and Ariel shook her hand. “These guys are intimidating,” Rachel continued, “I know, but my brother-that’s how I found out about them, they recruited my older brother last year-he says they’ve got a foolproof way of filtering out spies right away, and once you get past that you don’t have anything to worry about. How’d they recruit you?”

“Internet,” Ariel said vaguely. She looked back out the window. “I’m surprised they don’t black these out,” she said. “I mean, I could never find my way back, but you’d think-”

“Oh, they’ll wipe our memories of the trip when we get there,” Rachel said, as though this was nothing. Ariel tried to keep her face even, but her eyes must have widened because Rachel gave her a concerned look.

“It’s fine,” Ariel said. “I just… you know, I don’t have the greatest history with magic.”

“Oh, tell me about it,” Rachel said. “You and everybody else on this bus, or else we wouldn’t be here. But don’t you worry. Once we join up, _we’ll_ be the ones in control. No more being a victim for us.” She grabbed Ariel’s hand and squeezed it comfortingly. Ariel forced herself to squeeze back.

Luckily for Ariel, she was last in line for the memory wipe, so she got to observe the way the spell affected everyone: the way each person’s eyes rolled briefly back, the way their knees sagged for a moment as they recovered. She was able to imitate it without any difficulty.

The base was much bigger than Ariel’s contact in the FBI had estimated. _Fifty to seventy members, my foot_ , she thought to herself, annoyed. Off the top of her head, Ariel would guess that the base held at least 200 people, and that was just from the quick look she got before being escorted into the waiting room. There she sat, next to Rachel-who had instantly re-introduced herself after her memory wipe-for a few hours, before Rachel was called in and she was alone in the room, aside from a guard who stood silently by the door.

She was fiddling with her hair, barely resisting the urge to nervously pull out strands of it, when the door to the waiting room finally opened again, and she was called in.

The interrogation room was small, and most of the space was taken up by a large table. There was a very official-looking older man seated at it, who looked up and smiled as she entered. He was holding a folder with Ariel’s name written on it. This didn’t surprise Ariel at all. What did surprise her was the handcuffed woman seated next to him. Ariel couldn’t tell how old she was, because her head was on the table, buried in her arms, and her blonde hair was covering her face. There was a guard standing behind her, and he poked her shoulder roughly. “One more,” he said.

“So bring them in,” the woman mumbled, annoyed and still not lifting her head. “I can’t read them if they’re not here.” Her guard groaned.

“Come on,” he said, “you know she’s right there. Why do you always have to be difficult?”

“What are you-” the woman raised her head then, and stopped talking mid-question. She was maybe in her mid-forties, Ariel would have guessed, with striking green eyes and a heavy accent that Ariel couldn’t place, and for a split second she looked at Ariel like she was looking at a ghost. _She knows_ , Ariel thought, her heart sinking-but then the woman’s bored, dead expression was back, and neither of the men in the room had noticed. Sighing, the woman sat up, calmly brushing her hair back and out of her face as best as she was able with her wrists linked together. “Fine,” she said, “let’s get this over with.”

“Please,” the interrogator said, “Sit down, Miss Garcia.” Ariel sat across from him, trying not to stare at the woman but failing miserably. He followed her eyeline and smiled.

“Don’t worry about her,” he said smoothly. “She’s just here to let us know if there’s anything you’re not telling us.”

“Why is she-”

“Oh, she’s not exactly a volunteer. She gave us a lot of trouble four years ago, actually, set us back at least ten years-but our leader Henrik is exceptionally skilled at finding the silver lining in all situations. Now the organization’s stronger than ever, thanks to her.”

Ariel suppressed a shudder. “Stronger than ever?” she asked, hoping she sounded optimistic. _Four years ago_ , she made a note to herself-her handler had insisted there was no way the cult was more than two years old.

“We had maybe fifty recruits when we picked her up, and no reliable way to detect traitors. Now we have over three hundred, and complete trust in each and every one of them. Nobody can lie to _her_ , you see, and now she can’t lie to _us_. But we’re getting off-topic.” The man looked down at his folder. “You were recruited online, it says here, after one of our scouts found a rather long and, if I may say it, heartbreaking account on a support forum. Would you mind talking about that for a bit?”

Ariel tore her eyes away from the handcuffed woman and began her rehearsed spiel. It was about 95% accurate. She had, in fact, had a rather unfortunate alien encounter when she was fifteen, it had resulted in long-term side effects that she lived with to this day, and she had found the government’s response frustratingly underwhelming.

It hadn’t, on the other hand, left her bitter enough to join a magic-obsessed cult promising unspeakable power to its converts.

And, of course, she left out the part where it had left her with a permanent immunity to magic in almost all of its forms.

The interrogator had a million follow-up questions, which Ariel answered honestly whenever possible. The prisoner next to him did not seem to be paying attention to any of it. About halfway through, she started biting her nails and staring intently at the ceiling.

Half an hour later, the interrogator smiled again and closed his folder. “Well,” he said, “I think I’ve heard everything I need I need to hear, Miss Garcia. I’m sure you’ll make a wonderful addition to our team.” He looked to his right. “Well?”

“As far as I can tell, she isn’t lying or hiding anything,” the woman replied, still looking up. “Can I go back to my room now? The ceiling in there is a lot more interesting to stare at.”

The interrogator waved a hand to dismiss her as he looked down at Ariel’s file and made some notes. The guard grabbed her arm and pulled her to her feet, and as she was being led roughly out of the room, with the interrogator still looking down to write, she made deliberate eye contact with Ariel and winked.

 

* * *

 

“Ariel! Oh, thank God, you’re alive,” her partner Jay said, wrapping her in a giant bear hug the second she got back to their little base of operations. The third member of their team, Rosa, looked up from her workbench.

“I’m also very pleased you’re not dead,” she called over.

“Thanks, Rosa,” Ariel said, grinning. On the other side of the room, the FBI liaison, Agent Roberts, scowled.

“Well?” he asked. “Did you find out if the agents we sent in before you are alive or not?”

“No,” Ariel said, “but I found out how they got caught. They’ve got an empath.”

Roberts’ face fell. “Jesus,” he said, “those are rare. How on earth did he recruit one?”

“They didn’t recruit her, they took her prisoner,” Ariel explained. “Four years ago, they said. And I don’t know how, but somehow they’re preventing her from lying about what she senses. Any regular agent you send in, she’d be able to tell immediately that they were there to take the organization down. But whatever they’re doing to her doesn’t prevent her from being _misleading_ , so with me-she couldn’t sense me at all, I think I actually scared her for a second, so she knew something was up. But all she said was that _as far as she knew_ I wasn’t lying. And those idiots-you should see them, they’re so overconfident about having her, they didn’t question it at all.”

The FBI agent let out a deep breath. “So we have an in,” he said. “After six months of not being able to touch these guys, we’ve finally got a way in. We’ll be able to figure out who they are, what their actual goals are-”

“Jay?” Ariel said suddenly, looking over at him. His face had gone a shade paler, and he was tapping his fingers nervously on the table. He looked up.

“I… might already know who they are,” he said, not sounding happy about it.

Jay Bernard, like most Americans with minor innate magic, had been recruited by the government in his late teens. He’d worked for the FBI happily for ten years before officially quitting, and unofficially joining this independent cell in Arizona. To look at him, most would guess his magic was combative in nature. He had the physique of a linebacker, after all. But instead, his was purely mental-he remembered everything. _Everything_. The sheer amount of data filed away in his head at this point in his life, which he could recall at the drop of a hat, impressed laymen and terrified computer programmers.

“How?” Rosa asked.

“I know of an empath who went missing four years ago. And I know who she was going up against when she went missing. If it’s the same woman… but it’s just a hunch until Ariel identifies her, and I don’t want to lead the witness. Can you describe her?”

Ariel shrugged. “Middle-aged, very white, blonde, green eyes, some kind of heavy accent,” she said.

“What kind of accent?” Rosa asked, as Jay abruptly walked away and into his records room.

“I don’t know, it was like,” Ariel did her best impression of the woman, “Can I go back to my room now?” Rosa and Agent Roberts stared blankly at her.

“Was that Jamaican?” Rosa asked.

“It sounded Cockney to me,” Roberts said. Ariel rolled her eyes, and Jay came back in and handed her a binder. Ariel opened it-it was entirely pictures of people, no words.

“What are these?”

“Magic users that have gone missing over the years.”

“Is this a _daguerreotype_?” Ariel asked, looking at the first picture. “Don’t you think that whatever happened to this guy, he can probably be safely moved to the ‘dead’ pile by now?”

“Time travel isn’t completely unheard of,” Jay said, “and as far as magic is concerned, no body, no death.”

“Where are all the details for these people? Names, dates?” Jay tapped his temple, then flipped past about 80% of the pages. “Start here, let me know if you see her.” Ariel sat down and began slowly flipping through the pictures.

“So if this woman is who you think she is,” Roberts said, “what are we looking at here?”

“A cult,” Jay said, “that is incredibly cavalier about ripping the layers of reality apart. And quite capable of it, too. And-Ariel, how many people do they have?”

“Over three hundred,” she said, not looking up from the binder.

“Four years ago, it was about fifty,” Jay said.

Roberts frowned. “Have I heard of this woman?” he asked.

“You probably heard that she went missing,” Jay said. “If you watch any international news, anyway. You wouldn’t have known she had any kind of connection to the supernatural, though.”

“And how do _you_ know?”

“Oh, I’ve been friends with her handler for almost a decade now,” Jay said. “He was reaching out to everyone he could when she disappeared, and I promised I’d keep an eye out. Honestly, I never thought anything would come of it on my end-she didn’t go missing anywhere near here. The cult’s bad news for us, but if it is her, getting to tell my friend that we’ve found her, that she’s alive-that’ll be nice.”

“And why did he reach out to _you_?”

Jay smiled. “People trust me,” he said, “now that I don’t work for the American government.”

“Found her,” Ariel said, before the agent could respond. Jay walked over.

“You’re absolutely sure?” he asked. Ariel nodded.

“Yeah, that’s definitely her,” she said. “I mean, she looks a little older, and her eyes are kind of, you know, dead, but that’s her. Is she who you were thinking of?” Jay nodded.

“Yeah, that’s her,” he said. “Adele Agreste. Forty years old, turning forty-one in a few months. A French heiress-”

“That was a _French_ accent?” Rosa interrupted, looking at Ariel incredulously.

“-wife to the internationally renowned fashion designer Gabriel Agreste, and mother of his only son. And in the mid to late nineties, she was also known as Butterfly, one half of a crime-fighting superhero duo. Retired in 2000, last public appearance was 2002. Four years ago, Butterfly’s handler asked her to come out of retirement and go to Tibet to stop a small cult hell-bent on tearing apart the layers of reality that separate our realm from the quantic realm. She successfully stopped them, but neither Butterfly nor the cult were ever heard from again.” Jay frowned. “I guess they’ve been busy.”

“Wow,” Ariel said. “I’d completely forgotten that Gabriel Agreste’s wife went missing. I can’t believe she basically just saved my life.”

Rosa frowned and walked over to look at the picture. “Why does “butterfly-themed superhero based in Paris” ring a bell?” she asked. “I don’t think I ever learned about any international superheroes from the nineties, but-”

“Oh, you’re thinking of the _villain_ ,” Jay said. “Hawkmoth. He’s currently active.”

“Right, right,” Rosa said, “Now I remember. That’s why my sister switched her honeymoon plans from Paris to the Caribbean.”

Agent Roberts was still staring at the photo in disbelief. “The wife of Gabriel Agreste is an _empath_? And a _superhero_? Gabriel Agreste. The fashion designer. The eccentric billionaire shut-in.”

Ariel raised an eyebrow. “You sure know a lot about the international fashion scene,” she remarked.

“Gabriel Agreste is _revolutionary_ ,” the agent said defensively. “Everyone knows everything about him.”

“Apparently not,” Rosa said dryly.

“Wait.” Roberts looked at Jay. “Was she a _Miraculous_ holder?” Jay nodded. “So your friend… he’s the handler for Ladybug and Chat Noir as well?”

“Who?” Rosa asked as Jay nodded again.

“Paris’ current superheroes, Rosa, read a newspaper,” Ariel said. Rosa punched her in response, and Ariel grinned.

“Who is this handler, anyway?” Roberts asked. Jay folded his arms.

“The reason that people all over the world trust me,” he said, “is exactly because I don’t answer questions like that from federal agents.” Roberts groaned in exasperation.

“Fine. But you’re going to contact him, tell him we found his missing superhero?”

“Of course.”

Roberts grinned. “So while you’re doing that, maybe you can ask if his current proteges would be up for helping the FBI take these guys down?”


	2. Two Months Earlier

“Freedom!” Nino Lahiffe shouted joyfully, throwing his arm around his best friend as they both left their school. “Oh man, how psyched are you for your first official summer vacation?”

“I dunno, Nino,” Adrien said noncommittally, “I liked going to school.”

“That’s because you don’t know any better,” Nino said confidently. “Trust me, if you like going to school, you are going to absolutely love _not_ going to school. What should we do to celebrate?”

“I think my father’s scheduled-”

“ _Dude_! You are seriously killing the vibe I’m trying to get going here. Come on, ditch the bodyguard, let’s-”

“Adrien!” Nino and Adrien turned around to see Alya Cesaire running down the school steps three at a time. She caught up to them five seconds later, breathing heavily. “Hey… friend…” she said, doubled over and gasping for air. Adrien frowned.

“Are you okay?” he asked. “Maybe take a minute?” Alya nodded as she caught her breath, and in the meantime Marinette, who’d been trailing far behind her, caught up to them and patted Alya on the back gently.

“Sorry,” Alya finally said. “I didn’t know if you were going to disappear for the summer or not-”

“Not if I have anything to say about it,” Nino interrupted.

“-and I needed to ask if I can interview you for the Ladyblog.”

“The Ladyblog?” Adrien asked nervously. “Why… why would you want to interview _me_ for that? I’ve only met Ladybug a few times.”

“It’s not about Ladybug, it’s for a new segment I’m doing, on past superheroes. I thought I’d go backwards, right, so I was looking up stuff about the last superheroes in Paris. Imagine my surprise when I found out _you_ were one of the last people rescued by them! So I thought maybe you wouldn’t mind answering some questions about it.”

Adrien stared at his friend blankly. “What?”

“Okay, I get it,” Alya said apologetically, “you’re worried your dad will find out. But you can be an anonymous source! I’ll just say you were one of the kids in the daycare-I mean, okay, anybody who looks at the list of kids and knows me will _probably_ figure out you’re my source, but come on, no way your dad is paying enough attention to connect all those dots, right?”

“ _Alya_!” Marinette hissed at her friend, mortified.

“What? He knows that his dad-”

“Alya,” Adrien interrupted. “I have _no idea_ what you’re talking about.”

Alya blinked. “Seriously?” She reached into her book bag and pulled out a printout of an old newspaper article, titled “BUTTERFLY AND PAON SAVE TWENTY CHILDREN IN SHOCKING ATTACK ON DAYCARE”. Adrien took it from her and skimmed it.

“There’s no way this is me,” he said. “My parents would never have enrolled me in a daycare. It must be another Adrien Agreste.”

“That’s what I thought at first,” Alya said, “but then I looked up more articles about it, and some of them mention your dad _and_ his company. Even back then, he was pretty famous.” Alya looked at Adrien. “You seriously didn’t know?”

“No, they never…” he trailed off as he read the article in more detail. He looked up a minute later, stunned. “Well,” he said flatly. “That explains a lot. Like, my entire life basically.” He sighed. Nino put a hand on his friend’s shoulder comfortingly, then raised an eyebrow at Alya.

“Jeez,” she said, shocked, “I’m so sorry Adrien, I really figured you knew, or I wouldn’t have just dumped it all on you like this-”

“Don’t worry about it, it’s fine,” Adrien said softly. He looked at the article again. “What’s a Champion?” he asked.

“You know,” Alya said. “Like an akuma victim, but it’s Butterfly instead of Hawkmoth, so they were good guys instead of villains.” Adrien’s eyes widened.

“There was a _hero_ like Hawkmoth?” he asked. “With the same powers? And the butterflies and everything? Do you think they’re connected? Maybe there’s some clue about who Hawkmoth is-”

“Yeah, _no kidding_ ,” Alya said, annoyed. “She’s only the basis for, like, all the most popular “Who Is Hawkmoth?” theories on the Conspiracy Corner of the Ladyblog! I did an article summarizing them last month. I thought you _read_ the Ladyblog, Adrien!”

“I… uh… you know, I read the parts about Ladybug,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly.

“Give him a break, Alya, nobody reads _everything_ on the Ladyblog,” Nino said, coming to his friend’s defense at great personal risk. Alya glared at him, then looked at Marinette.

“Marinette. _You_ read everything on the Ladyblog, right?”

“Um...I might be a _little_ behind, but eventually-” Alya cut her friend off with a groan.

“So...what theories?” Adrien asked, trying to sound casual.

“Oh, anything,” Alya said, clearly still annoyed. “They’re all equally ridiculous, and all equally useless since nobody has the faintest idea who Butterfly was either. Some people think Hawkmoth is Butterfly’s son, some people think he murdered her and Paon both and stole their Miraculouses, some people think he _is_ Paon, and he went crazy and took her Miraculous after she died, that kind of thing. But I keep an eye on that section of the forums, just in case anybody comes up with anything useful one of these days.”

“Paon…” Adrien looked at the article again. “A peacock hero?”

“Yeah.”

Adrien’s mind flashed back to his father’s safe. He bit his lip, then looked at Alya. “Can I keep this?” he asked, holding the article up. She shrugged.

“Sure, I’ve got the link saved.”

“Thanks.” He shoved it in his bag, and Nino let out an exaggerated sigh.

“Can we _please_ ,” he said, “forget about your blog, which is basically a _job_ , for one afternoon, and just relax and enjoy ourselves? Come on, guys, the four of us are gonna-”

“I can’t,” Marinette said suddenly. All three of her friends looked at her. “I, um, have to… help my… uncle? Uh, with this design thing-”

“Girl,” Alya said, annoyed, “that is even weaker than your usual excuses. Don’t you want to hang out with me, and Nino, and _Adrien_?”

“Well, yes, of course, but I-”

“I can’t either, actually,” Adrien interrupted. He started walking away, towards the black car that had pulled up next to the sidewalk about twenty feet back. “But tomorrow, definitely!” he called, before getting in and disappearing.

The second he was out of view, Marinette had started running down the sidewalk in the opposite direction. “Tomorrow!” she called back, waving, before turning a corner.

Alya sighed and put her hands on her hips. “Those two, Nino, I swear to God,” she said. “Why do we even put up with them?”

“Beats me,” Nino said as he casually slid an arm around her waist.

 

* * *

 

“I want to try a new exercise today,” Master Fu said to Marinette as she entered his studio. “Here.” He held out a long strip of cloth to her, and she took it hesitantly.

“A blindfold?” she asked. He nodded.

“You are quite skilled,” he said, “at using Lucky Charm to get just the object you need to overcome an obstacle, even when you don’t know what it is that you need, or how you will use it. I’ve been very impressed, I must say.” Marinette blushed. “But I would like to see,” he continued, “if you can use Lucky Charm just as successfully when you don’t know what the _obstacle_ is.”

Marinette nodded. She wasn’t sure if Lucky Charm would work under such conditions, but she was determined to try. “Tikki,” she said, “Spots on!”

 

* * *

 

Adrien read the article over and over during the short drive from school to the Agreste mansion. From the sound of it, all of the kids had been in pretty rough shape for a few days after the attack. That explained why his parents had insisted on homeschooling him his whole life afterwards, he supposed.

It didn’t, though, explain why his father’s safe had (until a few weeks ago, anyway) contained a book filled with information about Miraculouses and Miraculous holders. Or why it had also contained a peacock clip. A clip that suspiciously resembled the one in the article’s grainy photograph of Paon.

Nathalie greeted him when he arrived home, quickly letting him know that his afternoon photo shoot had been cancelled before disappearing to take care of some business for his father. So once Adrien was back in his bedroom, he started looking up everything there was on Butterfly and Paon. Online newspaper archives weren’t as complete as he would have liked, but after a few hours of research he’d learned enough.

Like that they’d first shown up in 1995, the year Adrien’s parents had met. ( _That doesn't mean anything,_ Adrien told himself, _you and Ladybug showed up last year and you still haven't met her in real life yet._ )

And that they’d announced their retirement in 2000, about four months before Adrien had been born. ( _Lots of babies were born that year, and there are a lot of reasons to retire from being a superhero other than having a baby._ )

And that Paon’s Miraculous _definitely_ looked exactly like the clip he’d seen in his father’s safe. (On this matter, the skeptic inside Adrien had nothing.)

“It...it _couldn’t_ be him, right?” Adrien asked Plagg.

“Doesn’t seem like your dad,” Plagg said noncommittally, half asleep on the desk next to Adrien’s keyboard.

“I mean-the thing downstairs probably isn't even a real Miraculous. He had that book, so he knew what it looked like-maybe he made replicas for some reason. Right, Plagg?”

Plagg groaned. “I’m not at liberty to say,” he said, annoyed. Adrien’s eyes widened.

“It _is_ a real Miraculous? Why didn’t you mention that _three weeks ago_?”

“What part of ‘I’m not at liberty to say’ was confusing, kid? Kwami can’t rat on other Miraculous holders, it’s the rules. Besides, who cares if your dad was or wasn’t a superhero a million years ago?”

“I do! And I care why he’d have a Miraculous either way, and why he wouldn’t _use_ it when Hawkmoth is still-” Adrien looked at the picture on his screen, of Butterfly and Paon in the middle of fighting some kind of hydra monster in ‘98, and made up his mind. “That’s it,” he said, “we’re going downstairs and getting another look at what’s in that safe.”

“If you want my advice, you’ll listen to your friend and take a break for once.” In response, Adrien grabbed his kwami and dashed out of his room. But the foyer was deserted so, in the spirit of Nino’s advice, Adrien slid down the banister on the way to his father’s office. Once inside, Adrien headed straight for the portrait of his mother, swung it open to reveal the safe, and held up the hand holding his kwami.

“Well?” he asked. Plagg looked up at him and rolled his eyes.

“Come on, you already lost the book, isn’t that enough?”

“Just open it, Plagg.” Sighing in defeat, Plagg phased through the safe, and a second later it popped open. Adrien took a deep breath and looked inside. There was the Peacock Miraculous, right in front of a picture of his mother. “Should I take it?”

“No,” Plagg said immediately.

“But it could help me fight-”

“No, no, trust me, have I ever steered you wrong?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Adrien said, annoyed. “All the time.”

“Miraculouses are fussy,” Plagg continued, pointedly ignoring the insult. “If the Guardian doesn’t give it to you personally, you probably shouldn’t be using it.”

“Who?”

“Look, forget about that one, okay? You’re not suited to it. Just thank your lucky stars you’re suited to the _best_ Miraculous, mine.”

“But why-” Adrien froze as he heard a familiar pattern of footsteps coming down the stairs. “Shoot,” he muttered, closing the safe and pulling the portrait back into position. The footsteps were getting closer now, and Adrien panicked and ducked behind one of the heavy black curtains in the room mere seconds before his father entered it.

“Great,” Plagg whispered into his ear, “now we’re stuck here until your dad finishes working. Which could take _forever_ , knowing him.” Adrien glared silently at his kwami, while trying to move as little as possible.

Through the thick curtain, Adrien could hear his father taking a business call. It had been years since Adrien had bothered even trying to eavesdrop on one, and now he remembered why: they were mind-numbingly boring. About ten minutes in, Adrien started to wonder if he could successfully doze off while standing up without being discovered.

Finally, what felt like hours later but was probably more like forty minutes, the call ended and Adrien heard his father start to leave the room. The footsteps had almost faded away when the phone on the desk rang again. Adrien bit back a groan as the footsteps grew louder again, and Adrien’s father answered the call.

“Yes?” he asked, sounding as though he was already annoyed with the caller for wasting his time.

“Gabriel?” That got Adrien’s attention. Adrien couldn't remember the last time he’d heard anyone call his father by his first name. Thinking about it, he realized it might have been his mother.

“Fu,” Adrien’s father said, his tone changed from annoyed to ice cold.

“I got my book back,” the voice said lightly, to Adrien’s shock. “I thought I’d call and see if you’re interested in returning the other item you have that belongs to me.”

“Nothing I have,” Gabriel Agreste said, controlled but furious, “belongs to _you_.”

“That is technically true,” the voice agreed, unperturbed. “But it is my job to guard the inactive Miraculouses, and I can’t very well guard the one that’s locked up in your safe, can I?” He sighed. “If you’re not going to return it, perhaps I should just come over there in person and retrieve it.”

“Oh, I would _love_ to see you try. If you set one foot on my property, I promise I’ll have you arrested for trespassing before you can get anywhere near it.”

“Gabriel, I know we didn’t exactly part on the best of terms, but I don’t understand what’s driving this level of animosity.”

“You-” Gabriel took a breath, as though to steady himself; Adrien had never in his life heard his father so angry, “you gave my _son_ -you gave _Adele’s_ son-one of those… _things_. How _dare_ you? After everything they’ve put this family through-after everything _you’ve_ put this family through-you have the nerve to-”

“Adrien,” the voice on the phone interrupted, “has done a noble, admirable job with the responsibility to which he’s been entrusted. He was an excellent choice, and I have no regrets about giving him a Miraculous. I wish I could say the same for his father.”

“I suppose I’m meant to be insulted?”

“I never should have given you one, and you know it.”

“Well, we’re in perfect agreement on that. In fact, you never should have given anybody one. You should have locked them all in a lead safe and thrown them into the deepest part of the ocean.”

“No,” the voice said sadly. “You are the only time I ever got it wrong. You were a good fit for the Peacock, and you loved Adele, so I let myself be blinded to the obvious fact that you simply weren’t a good fit for being a superhero.”

Adrien was starting to wonder if it was possible to have a heart attack at the age of fifteen, because if so he was fairly certain he was in the middle of one now.

“Return the Miraculous,” the voice continued, “or use it to help your son defeat Hawkmoth. There is no other-” The voice was cut off by a sudden beep, followed by a loud dial tone. Another beep, and the phone was silent once more.

Adrien prayed fervently that he’d hear his father leave the room, but instead he heard steps nearby, and the unmistakable creak of the chair at the desk-his father had sat down. Adrien thought this was just about the worst thing he could have heard, but he quickly learned how wrong that was.

“You might as well come out,” his father said loudly a moment later, and now Adrien really _was_ having a heart attack. “ _Now_ ,” his father added sharply. Sighing, Adrien poked his head out from behind the curtain.

“Hello, Father,” he said, defeated. Gabriel looked up from some legal document he’d apparently been reading. He looked genuinely surprised, which was not a look that Adrien saw often on his father. They stared at each other silently for a moment, and then Adrien’s father regained his ironclad composure.

“Good Lord, Adrien,” his father said calmly, adjusting his glasses. “If you’re going to be a defender of Paris, you really should learn how to call a bluff.” He went back to reading the document.

“I-” Something about this-the sheer injustice of the criticism, perhaps-shook Adrien out of the state of terror he’d been in for the past hour, and now he was just _annoyed_. “You didn’t know I was there? What, do you just say that every time you’re in an empty room?”

“Only after extremely sensitive conversations,” his father replied calmly, not looking up.

“And… and you already _knew_ about me being Chat Noir?”

“Do you have a question, Adrien?”

Adrien stared at him, incredulous. “Don't you have anything to _say_ about it?”

His father flipped a page, still reading. “Well,” he started, “I had been somewhat concerned as of late that between your schoolwork, your modeling schedule, fencing, Chinese, and defeating three or so akumas a week, you might be slightly overworked. But if you still have enough free time to hide in my office eavesdropping for an hour, it would seem my concerns were unfounded.”

Adrien had imagined his father finding out about his secret life as a superhero many, many times over the past nine months. He’d imagined his father being proud, furious, elated, terrified. He hadn't imagined this level of indifference.

 _He’s not indifferent_ , Adrien reminded himself. _You heard him talking about it five minutes ago, he was livid. He’s just doing what he always does, shutting you out._

“How… how long have you known?” Adrien asked.

“A rather embarrassingly short period of time, I’m afraid,” his father replied. “Your mother would have figured it out in less than a week, I’m sure, but I didn’t begin to suspect until I saw your ring last month, and I didn't know for certain until you stole the book. Which I suppose I can’t fault you for doing, although _really_ , Adrien, removing it from the premises was exceedingly careless, don’t you think?”

“I-”

“Well, it hardly matters now,” his father continued. “I’d already gotten everything I needed from it.”

“For _what_?”

“Defeating Hawkmoth.”

Whatever Adrien had been expecting, it wasn’t that. “What? But…but you already have a _Miraculous_. If you want to help us take down Hawkmoth, wouldn't that be a lot more helpful that a book?”

“No,” his father said firmly.

“But-”

“The Miraculouses are sirens, Adrien. They promise you power, a chance to make a difference, but their promises are empty and dangerous.”

“That's not true!” Adrien said defensively. “Ladybug and I _have_ made a difference.”

“Oh?” His father leaned back in his chair and looked up at his son. “Tell me, are you any closer to stopping Hawkmoth than you were nine months ago, when he first appeared?”

That stung.

“Don't mistake me, you've both done a fine job treating the symptoms of this nightmare, but Paris needs a cure, and I believe I've found one. It will take a few more months, but I may have a way to neutralize Miraculouses on a city-wide scale.”

For a minute, Adrien was completely speechless. “What, all of them?” he asked. His father raised an eyebrow.

“Including yours, you mean? Yes.”

“But-Ladybug and I, we wouldn’t-”

“Why would you need to be Chat Noir if Hawkmoth has been defeated?” his father interrupted.

“I-we do things other than fight Hawkmoth. Ladybug and I, we… we go on patrols and-”

“Those are tasks better left to the police force, trust me,” his father said impatiently. “I must confess, Adrien, I'm baffled. I thought you always wanted a normal life.”

“I just wanted a life! Any life!” Adrien shouted at his father. Adrien’s eyes immediately widened and even though he’d started this conversation determined to stand up for himself for once, he started backtracking. “I...I mean...Father, I _like_ being Chat Noir.”

Gabriel Agreste sighed and closed his eyes. “You’re so much like your mother,” he whispered.

Adrien wished it had sounded like a compliment.

“This was you and Mom, right?” he asked, pulling the newspaper article out of his pocket and showing it to his father. His father glanced at the headline and nodded. “And Mom… Mom had Hawkmoth’s Miraculous?”

“ _Hawkmoth_ ,” Adrien’s father said, with sudden venom, “has _hers_. He… I don't know if you can appreciate what it's been like, after losing her, to see…” He removed his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose, struggling to find the right words. “Imagine losing Ladybug,” he said. “Imagine she died nobly, protecting the city, protecting the world. Imagine trying to carry on after that, wondering year after year when it's finally going to start getting easier. And then imagine some villain shows up. He has her Miraculous. He has her powers, the powers she always used to save and protect people. And he's using them to terrorize Paris, _her_ city, the city she gave everything for. He’s corrupting her legacy, perverting it, making a mockery of everything she _died_ for-” the glasses in Gabriel’s hand suddenly broke in two, snapping Gabriel out of the state he'd been in. He looked at the pieces for a moment, transfixed. “Forgive me, I… it's been a difficult year.”

Adrien wasn't quite sure what to say to this, because despite everything it has easily been the best year of his life.

“What… what was she like?” Adrien asked. “As a superhero?”

“She was…” For a moment, Adrien actually believed he'd be able to get his father to open up, though of course he knew better. Then Gabriel sighed and glanced at the clock on his desk. “I’m very busy, Adrien,” his father said. “And I’m running behind schedule. Perhaps we can discuss it another time.”


	3. Summer

Chat Noir returned from defeating another akuma like he often did, by launching himself from the rooftops and soaring through the open window of his private bathroom, landing gracefully and silently. As usual, he then dropped his transformation and exited.

What wasn’t usual, however, was running into his father on the other side of the door, standing in the middle of his bedroom, watching his TV and scowling slightly. He looked over as his son appeared.

“You defeated that akuma nearly twenty minutes ago, Adrien,” he said. “What took you so long getting home?”

“I… I don’t know, we didn’t need Cataclysm so I had time, I took the scenic route back.”

Gabriel Agreste raised an eyebrow. “I’m a very busy man, I don’t have time to be waiting around for you while you take the scenic route back to this house.”

“I didn’t even _know_ you were-” His father cut him off with an impatient and dismissive wave of his hand.

“It doesn’t matter. I wanted to have a word with you about your technique as of late.”

“What.”

Gabriel picked up the remote and rewound the live news broadcast he’d apparently recorded, then paused on a shot of Chat Noir right before he’d gotten hit with a blast from the akuma victim. “You take far too many hits for that girl,” Gabriel said sternly. “It is, frankly, alarming.”

Adrien was speechless for a moment. “Of course I take hits for her,” he said defensively, “she’s my _partner_.”

“You are letting your feelings for her cloud your judgement, and it’s making you act irrationally.”

“No, I’m not! It’s perfectly rational for me to take most of the hits, _she’s the one who can cleanse akumas_. If I get taken out, that gives her the opportunity to get the job done. If _she_ gets taken out, the city’s screwed.”

“There’s no call to get over-excited,” his father said, and Adrien’s temper flared.

“You never took a hit for Mom?” he asked angrily.

“I-” Surprisingly, that actually seemed to stump Adrien’s father for a moment. Only a moment though. “That is neither here nor there,” Gabriel finally replied stiffly. “What I did not do was go _out of my way_ to take a hit when it was more prudent to get _both_ of us safely out of the way of danger. That’s all I’m suggesting.”

“That’s easy when you have teleportation powers,” Adrien muttered defensively. His father glanced at his watch in response.

“I don’t have time to continue arguing about this,” he said. “I’ve given you my advice, you’re free to accept it or ignore it as you like.” Before Adrien could respond, his father had left the room. Groaning, Adrien threw himself face-down on his bed.

“Why did I think,” he complained out loud, “even for a second, that my father knowing my secret might actually bring us closer together?” He rolled over on his back and sighed. “It’s just another thing for me to get wrong, isn’t it?”

“Oh, who cares what your dad says,” Plagg said cheerfully. “You heard the Guardian, you’re a way better superhero than he ever was.”

“That’s not what he said,” Adrien pointed out, “and anyway, we don’t know everything that-wait, why am I defending him?” Adrien grabbed a pillow, covered his face with it, and groaned again. “I need to get out of this house,” he said, his words muffled.

Right on cue, his phone rang. Adrien threw the pillow aside and picked it up.

“Hey dude,” Nino said on the other end, “Would you be up for-”

“ _Yes_ ,” Adrien interrupted emphatically. “Whatever it is, wherever it is, whenever it is, count me in.”

 

* * *

 

Marinette’s phone was, at the same time, also ringing. “Hey, Marinette,” Alya said cheerfully, “what are you doing tomorrow afternoon?”

Marinette frowned, trying to remember. “I'm not sure, I think my parents might need help with-”

“Wrong,” Alya interrupted, “you're coming with me and Nino to the zoo.”

“The zoo? Why?”

“One, there's like a 78% chance Nino manages to drag Adrien along. Two, they have a new hands-on insect exhibit that sounds awesome. Three, it’s kind of our five-month anniversary and the zoo is kind of where we became a couple-”

“Because you got locked in a panther cage while an akumatized zookeeper turned into a T-Rex and tried to eat everyone,” Marinette reminded her.

Alya inhaled and exhaled impatiently. “Girl, since moving to Paris I have had to update my threshold for “weird and traumatizing” on a near-weekly basis. And if I avoided every place in the city where I’d had an experience like that, I'd never go _anywhere_.”

“Fair enough. So… 78% chance, you say?”

Marinette could practically hear her friend grin over the phone. “I'll see you at two,” Alya said.

 

* * *

 

Marinette had been worried, near the end of the school year, that summer vacation would mean Adrien’s disappearance for three straight months. All his friends had, actually, everyone in their class-it was no secret that Adrien’s father kept him both incredibly busy and on a fairly short leash, and school was basically the poor kid’s only excuse to get out of his house unsupervised. But to everyone’s surprise, Adrien had been around a lot. He seemed (slightly) less shy about pushing back against his more ridiculous boundaries, a little less scared of voicing his own opinions, since summer began. Nino credited his own good influence, which Alya scoffed at-but for whatever reason, Adrien had been hanging out with Nino more often than usual lately.

And Marinette, of course, was spending most of her free time with Alya.

And Alya and Nino were basically spending all their free time with each other.

Which meant that, through a somewhat roundabout path, Adrien and Marinette were hanging out together. A _lot_.

By the end of the first month, Marinette had almost graduated to reliably using complete sentences around him, and Alya couldn't have been prouder.

 

* * *

 

“Nino! Nino, hand me my phone, quick!” Alya and Nino were at the praying mantis section of the exhibit, where they actually got to hold the strange looking creatures. Alya’s had just looked up at her, cocked its head to the side, and jumped up, perching right on the edge of her glasses frame.

“I can't believe you're not holding your phone already,” Nino said, as he put his mantis down and grabbed the phone out of Alya’s purse. “I thought an old fortune teller cursed you to drop dead if you didn't look at this thing at least once every ten minutes.”

Alya flipped him off (lovingly, it must be said) before grabbing the phone and taking a gleeful selfie with the bug. “This is going to be such an awesome new profile picture,” she said, as the exhibit’s volunteer gently scooped the mantis off of Alya’s face. “Marinette, did you see that?

“Pretty cool,” Marinette agreed, but she seemed more interested in the beetle exhibit ten meters away. “Did you see these iridescent ones?” she asked, pointing at a brilliant jewel-toned bug. “I wish I'd brought my sketchbook, I've got about ten new ideas all of a sudden.”

“Well, you can always come-wait, where’s Adrien? I don’t think I’ve seen him for at least ten minutes.” The three of them looked around, but there was no sign of him.

“Is there a ladybug section?” Nino asked. “Because if so, that's definitely where he is. That guy has it _bad_ for-” he stopped talking suddenly, noticing Alya’s death glare. Marinette looked at them, confused.

“He’s what?” she asked.

“Uh, you know, he’s just… just, like, the biggest Ladybug fan in the city, that’s all. With the posters, and-”

“First of all,” Alya interrupted, “ _I_ am the biggest Ladybug fan in the city. Second, don’t worry about it,” she said to Marinette reassuringly, completely misinterpreting the blush that was starting to creep across her friend’s face. “It’s just like a celebrity crush thing, it’s not _real_.”

“Adrien has a _crush_ on Ladybug?” Alya glared at Nino again, which basically confirmed Marinette’s long-held suspicion that Alya had told him all about her feelings for Adrien, but she was too distracted to care.

“It’s superficial!" Alya insisted. “Anyway, the ladybugs are over there,” she pointed to a station three spots down, “and he isn’t. He must be somewhere else, or… he wouldn’t have left, would he have?”

Nino shrugged, looking around. “He does kind of flake randomly, but he usually shouts some excuse first.”

“Are you three looking for your blonde friend?” the exhibit volunteer asked, as she closed the latch on the mantis habitat. “I saw him head into the butterfly room.”

Marinette, Nino and Alya each stared at the woman, mouths slightly agape. “There's a _butterfly_ room?” Marinette asked in disbelief.

“Like,” Alya added, “a room where butterflies are flying around and they just… _land_ on you?”

The volunteer groaned. “I know, I know,” she said apologetically. “I know exactly what you're thinking. I told the organizer it was a bad idea. _Everyone_ told him it was a bad idea. But he insisted. Some childhood nostalgia thing.”

Alya frowned “It just seems a little…”

“Tone-deaf?” Marinette suggested.

“Tactless?” Nino added.

“Idiotic,” Alya said.

“He kept saying it would help people move past their trauma,” the volunteer continued, rolling her eyes. “Your friend’s the first visitor I've seen go in there since the exhibit opened. He’s been in there a while, too.”

The three friends exchanged a worried look. “Maybe I'd better check on him,” Marinette finally said.

“Better you than me,” Nino replied. The volunteer pointed to a door on the far side of the large, open room, and Marinette made her way over.

Stepping inside the room, she fought back a shudder and looked around for Adrien. He was sitting on a small bench, staring at a viceroy butterfly that had landed on the back of his hand.

“Adrien?”

Adrien looked up, surprised. “Oh, hey Marinette,” he said. He seemed happy to see her, at least-but then he always seemed happy to see practically anyone. Even Chloe sometimes, if she wasn't in the middle of being too overbearing.

“Are you okay?”

“Oh, yeah.” He looked around. “Just thinking.”

“About Hawkmoth?”

“No,” he said, like the thought honestly hadn't occurred to him. “About my mother.”

Marinette was completely blindsided by this answer. “Your mother? Um… do you, uh, want to talk about it?” She sat next to Adrien on the bench, and another butterfly landed on him. Marinette tried not to think about how his future akumatization was probably inevitable.

Adrien shrugged. “There's not much to talk about,” he said, not meeting her eyes. “I just… I just recently found out she used to like butterflies, that's all.”

“Oh.”

“She would’ve…” he trailed off, then took a breath. “She would have been sad, I think, to see what they’ve come to represent in Paris.”

“Oh.” _Come on, Marinette_ , she thought to herself, annoyed, _say something coherent for once._

“So I thought I'd just, you know, come in here and try to appreciate them a little. For her. See them like she used to see them.”

“That's...that's really beautiful,” Marinette said, and Adrien smiled at her, and her world lit up.

 

* * *

 

Marinette didn’t get back to her bedroom until hours later-the four of them had spent all afternoon at the zoo, then gone out for dinner, then walked around downtown for awhile, watching tourists and enjoying the city at night. But finally, the day had ended, and now Marinette was back, wondering if the twenty minutes she had until patrol would be enough time to decompress.

Marinette sat down and looked around her room, at the posters of Adrien everywhere, and remembered Nino mentioning that Adrien had posters of _her_. She hadn’t really let that fully hit her yet. Now that she was actually thinking about it, though, it felt…

 _Weird_.

Not in a good way, either.

Sighing, Marinette turned to her kwami. “Adrien wouldn’t like all these posters, would he?”

“Probably not,” Tikki said gently. Marinette nodded, then got up and started taking the posters down. “Are you sure?” Tikki asked.

“Yeah, it’s… I mean, they’re not really very _Adrien_ anyway, are they?”

“That’s very mature of you.”

Marinette couldn’t quite bring herself to put them in the trash, though, so she settled for rolling them up and leaning them against a corner of her room. Sighing, she looked at the framed picture on her desk. “Is it…” she hesitated. “It’s probably alright to keep that one, don’t you think?” Tikki nodded, understanding that Marinette was, after all, still a teenage girl, with a heart that loved hard and let go of bad habits reluctantly.

A week later, though, she’d removed that picture too, and replaced it with a selfie that Alya had taken that night of the four of them, laughing and hugging.

 

* * *

 

Patrol that night was routine, and the two superheroes finished their usual circuit of the city with no incident. As they reached their starting point, Ladybug began to head off, waving goodnight to her partner, when he stopped her.

“Ladybug?” he asked. “Before you go, can I ask you something?”

“Of course, Chat, what is it?”

“If,” he took a deep breath, “if there were a way to stop Hawkmoth, but it meant we’d have to stop being Ladybug and Chat Noir-should we do it?”

“Oh.” Ladybug had been expecting something far more personal and less world-shaking. She frowned, deep in thought for a minute. “I… well, I guess we’d have to-if we were sure that he wouldn't come back with us still powerless, anyway. I don't think I'd be _happy_ about it-but it wouldn't be fair to Paris, to refuse, just because I'd miss being Ladybug.”

Chat sighed. “Yeah,” he said, resigned, “that's what I thought you'd say.”

“Is there really a way?” she asked, her eyes wide.

“Not yet, but maybe in a month or two. I've-I met a former Miraculous holder, and it's something he's been working on since Hawkmoth showed up.”

Ladybug’s jaw dropped slightly. “You met another Miraculous holder?”

“A month ago-I'm sorry I didn't tell you then, I just-it's weird, I'm not sure how to-well. He's not what I would have expected from a Miraculous holder, that's all.” Chat walked to the edge of the roof and sat down, legs over the side. Ladybug joined him.

“What’s he like?” she asked.

Chat shrugged. “Closed off. I guess it's understandable. He lost his wi-his partner, many years ago.”

“Oh,” Ladybug said, suddenly understanding. “Paon.” Chat glanced at her, surprised.

“You’ve heard of him?”

“A little-from the Ladyblog, actually. Does he know how Hawkmoth got his partner’s Miraculous?”

Chat shrugged again. “Maybe. It's hard to get him to talk about her. I think if he knew anything that would help us find Hawkmoth he’d tell me, though.”

“Is he your mentor now?”

“God, no.” Chat didn’t offer any further explanation.

Ladybug nodded, then took a deep breath herself. “Actually… full disclosure. I also met a Miraculous holder, about two months ago. He's been giving me some training.” Now it was Chat’s jaw that dropped. “Not only that-he's the one that gave us our Miraculouses.”

“The Guardian?”

Ladybug nodded. “Did your kwami tell you about him, too?”

“No-I'm starting to get the impression your kwami is a lot more proactive than mine.” Ladybug smiled. “No, Paon mentioned him.”

“Do you want to meet him? I-I mean, I haven’t asked, but I’m sure if you wanted some training too, he’d be more than happy to give it. I really feel like I’ve been improving a lot lately, thanks to him.”

“Thanks for the offer,” Chat said, “but maybe I should wait. I know I said Paon wasn’t my mentor, but we are kind of, I don’t know, talking about things? I mean, it’s like pulling teeth, but still. And anyway, he, uh, he's not a fan of the Guardian, so it would probably be simpler if I don’t meet him just yet.”

“Oh. It-I guess it didn’t occur to me, that a Miraculous holder might not like the Guardian. The Guardian gave Paon his powers, right?”

“Yeah, but… you know, he gave them to Butterfly, too.”

Ladybug nodded, understanding. “Ah.”

“I think Paon blames the Guardian for what happened to her.”

“So… what did happen to her?”

“She left, to stop some bad guys,” Chat said. His voice was tight. “She didn't come back.” His voice broke a little on the last word. Ladybug looked over at him, and his eyes were wet.

“Chat?” She placed a hand on his shoulder comfortingly. “Are you alright? Is there something else? You can tell me anything, you know.”

“I-” Chat took a deep breath and let it out slowly before looking at Ladybug. He almost told her everything right then. But she was looking at him with those wide eyes full of trust and genuine affection-and even though she said he could tell her anything, Chat knew she wanted to keep their identities a secret. He couldn't bring himself to betray that, much as he wanted to. “I just don't know what I'd do, if you didn't come back, that's all,” he said instead.

“Oh, kitty!” Ladybug threw her arms around her partner, pulling him into a tight embrace. “I'm not going anywhere, I promise,” she whispered fiercely.


	4. An Overdue Conversation

When Marinette showed up at Master Fu’s studio a few weeks later for her usual lesson, he was sitting at his small table in the room off to the side, deep in thought.

“Sir?”

He looked up. “Ah, Ladybug. Join me. I have a question for you.”

“Yes?” she asked, sitting across from him.

“Is it better,” he asked her, “to deliver important news right away, if nothing can be done about it for some time, or wait until action can be taken?”

Marinette blinked. “Could you be a _little_ more specific?” she asked.

“You don't have an opinion on the principle?”

“I can barely tell what the principle is,” she said, and then added, “sir.”

Fu nodded. “In that case… before your time, there was another set of heroes in this city. One of them was lost years ago, and I've just received word that she’s been found.”

Marinette’s eyes grew wide. “Butterfly’s _alive_?” she asked, stunned. Fu raised an eyebrow. “I, um… Chat mentioned her a while ago,” Marinette explained. “He’s been talking to Paon,” she added, trying to shake the absurd sense that she was somehow tattling on Chat. “I guess he didn't _explicitly_ say she was dead, but from the way he talked about her I just assumed-”

“Many people did,” Fu interrupted. “Including Paon. Including myself, I'm somewhat ashamed to say. She is quite alive, however, and in need of rescuing. But the window for doing so won't open for another month.”

It took Marinette a moment to remember the question that had started this conversation, and then she stared at her mentor incredulously. “You're not actually thinking of _waiting to tell him_?”

“Perhaps it would be cruel,” Fu said. “Perhaps it would be too painful, to know his partner had been waiting four years to be rescued, and to be forced to wait for a month longer. You don't think that would be torturous?”

“Of course it would,” Marinette said impatiently. “That’s not the point. He'd still want to _know_.”

“Are you certain?”

“Of course! Anyone would want to know!”

The Guardian smiled. “In that case,” he said, “we’re going for a walk.”

 

* * *

 

Twenty minutes of walking through the city later, and Marinette was still trying to figure out if she’d just passed some kind of a secret test or not. It was not the first time, since meeting the Guardian, that she'd been forced to wonder such a thing, and it was starting to get on her nerves.

“Shouldn't we call ahead?” Marinette suggested. “In case he’s not home?”

“He's always home,” Fu replied.

“Well, wouldn't it be polite anyway?”

“Perhaps,” Fu agreed, “but the last time we spoke he did threaten to have me arrested for trespassing if I visited, so I think just this once it might be more prudent if he received no advanced warning.”

Marinette froze in her tracks. “He _what_?” But the Guardian didn’t slow his pace, so after a few seconds Marinette had to run and catch up with him.

“ _Sir_ ,” she said, trying not to sound panicked, “For obvious reasons, I have tested my parents’ patience a _lot_ over the past year. Like, maybe more than every other year of my life combined. All the unexplained absences, being late to everything, missing important family events-they’ve been _saints_ about it. So I would really, very strongly, prefer not to push my luck any further by getting _arrested_ for _trespassing_.”

“Oh, I don’t think that’s likely,” Fu said calmly.

 _Not a fan_ , that was all Chat had said on Paon’s feelings towards Fu. And here Marinette had thought Chat incapable of subtlety.

“Chat said Paon blames you,” she said, remembering suddenly.

“I’m sure he does.”

“Whose fault was it?”

“If you had lived through as much as I have,” Fu said slowly, “you might understand how truly useless that question is. It wasn’t anybody’s fault. It was just several very sad things that aligned in exactly the wrong way. But if it brings Paon any comfort to blame me for his wife’s disappearance, he is certainly free to do so.”

Marinette froze once more. “His _wife_?”

“Chat didn’t tell you that?”

“No, he just-Paon and Butterfly are _married_?” Was that normal, superhero partners marrying each other? Was it _expected_? Not that she didn’t love Chat, she reminded herself hastily, they were a great team, she trusted him with her life on a near-daily basis, but-

 _Ugh, you’ll have time to worry about that later_ , she thought to herself, annoyed. _Focus on the crazy thing happening right now_.

“I really don’t think I should be there,” Marinette said. “It’s one thing to tell a superhero that his partner is alive, but his _wife_ , it’s so personal. And I don’t know him at all. I really don’t think it’s any of my business. It’s bad enough I even heard about it before him.”

“It is the business of every rightful Miraculous holder in the city,” Fu said firmly.

“You’re not dragging _Chat_ along,” Marinette pointed out. Fu ignored this. Sighing, Marinette continued walking alongside him, resigning herself to an incredibly awkward afternoon.

 

* * *

 

After about ten more minutes of walking, Marinette spotted the Agreste mansion up ahead. She craned her neck as they got closer, trying to see if she could get a glimpse of Adrien through the windows, beyond the giant gate. She hadn’t seen him in almost a week-maybe she’d run into him now, and she’d have an excuse to get out of visiting Paon and maybe getting arrested. Marinette was so distracted that she didn't notice Master Fu stop in front of the gate. “Oh! Sorry, sorry!” she cried as she barged right into him, practically knocking him over.

“No worries,” he said gently. “We’re here.”

“We-huh?” Marinette looked at Fu, and then at the Agreste mansion. “Paon lives _here_?”

“That’s right.”

“But… but this… this is where…” Marinette trailed off as she quickly cross-referenced the few things Chat had told her about Paon with everything she knew about Gabriel Agreste.

Closed off? Check.

Lost his wife many years ago? Check.

Not what one would expect from a Miraculous holder? Big, huge check.

Marinette felt like part of her brain was short circuiting.

Adrien’s parents were former superheroes. Adrien’s parents were former superheroes, and his missing mother was alive, and Marinette was about to barge into his house uninvited and tell all that to his father-and that was only if he didn't have her arrested before she got the chance.

“Alright, Wayzz,” Fu said softly, and the little green kwami flew out of his shirt pocket and phased through the gate. A moment later, it swung open gently.

“Shouldn’t we at least ring the doorbell first?” Marinette asked.

“Oh, we’d never get inside _that_ way,” Fu said lightly. Marinette was starting to understand why someone might threaten to have him arrested for trespassing. “Come along,” he added.

“This is _breaking and entering_ ,” Marinette said, but she followed Fu, shutting the gate behind her. She felt exposed the entire long walk up to the front door, but as far as she could tell no one noted their approach. Wayzz phased through the front door, and again it slowly swung open. Fu walked briskly in; Marinette took a moment to steady herself, then followed.

“Gabriel?” Fu called out, his voice echoing in the large and empty house. Marinette heard a door open, and a moment later Gabriel Agreste was storming towards them.

“I believe I was _very_ clear, the last time we spoke, about what would happen if you dared to show your face here,” Gabriel Agreste said with a cool fury. Fu didn't react, but Marinette wasn’t entirely successful in biting back a frightened “eep”.

“Gabriel,” Fu said calmly. “We have things to discuss. All of us. Including you.”

“I have nothing to discuss with-” Gabriel noticed Marinette. “Who’s the girl?” he asked.

“Guess.”

Gabriel looked at Marinette again, looked at her earrings, and raised an eyebrow at Fu. “Well, I certainly hope you didn't bring her out of a misguided belief that I'd hesitate to call the police on a minor.”

“The rightful Miraculous holders of this city are overdue for a conversation. Something of the utmost importance has come up.”

“I am not a Miraculous holder,” Gabriel said angrily.

“Then give it back.”

Instead, Gabriel pulled a cell phone out of his pocket. “You have five seconds to get out of my home,” he said, “and then-”

“Oh, hi Marinette!” All three of them turned to see Adrien at the top of the stairs. He waved happily and started towards them.

“Hi Adrien,” Marinette said, simultaneously overjoyed and horrified to see him.

“You know this girl, Adrien?” his father asked.

“This is Marinette, Father,” Adrien said. “She goes to my school.” Gabriel shot Fu a look, but said nothing. “You know her too, Father,” his son continued.

“I’m quite certain I've never seen her before in my life.”

“She won your hat design contest last year.”

“My _what_?”

“Your design competition,” Adrien said patiently. “The derby hat? With the feathers?”

“Oh.” For the first time since Fu had arrived, Gabriel no longer looked furious. “Oh, yes, the _hat_ I recall. It was quite good.”

“Marinette’s an _incredible_ designer, Father,” Adrien said earnestly, and Marinette smiled and turned bright red. “She designs her own clothes, and she's made things for rock stars, and-”

“Wait.” Gabriel looked at Marinette, then at his son, and then at Fu. “An aspiring designer and a part-time model? Again? _Really_?”

Fu smiled gently. “Fate, it would seem, has a sense of humor.”

“Well, that makes one of us,” Gabriel Agreste muttered, annoyed. He looked at the teenagers, and considered the prospect of calling the police on his son’s friend. It was probably a closer thing than it should have been, but eventually Gabriel relented. “Oh, very well,” he sighed, annoyed, “let's get this over with.” He turned and walked briskly towards a room off to the right, and Fu followed.

“Is that your uncle?” Adrien asked.

“Huh?” The question might as well have been in another language for all Marinette understood it.

“The one you've been helping all summer? Remember, you missed the movies last week?”

“Oh, right. Um. Yeah, I guess that's him.”

Adrien cocked his head slightly. “You guess?”

“Well, he's not really my uncle,” Marinette confessed.

“Oh. Do you have any idea what he wants to talk about with-”

“What is taking you so long?” Gabriel Agreste asked, reappearing and glaring at them impatiently.

“Who, me?” the teens both asked simultaneously.

“Both of you get in here _now_.” They hurried over, following him into a surprisingly comfortable-looking study. “I have no intention,” he continued as he closed the heavy door behind them, “of spending a second longer than necessary on whatever nonsense this is.” He turned to Fu as Marinette and Adrien both sat down next to each other on a small couch. “Well?” he said. “You’ve got all your precious Miraculous holders together, what is so-” Gabriel was cut off by a small scream. He looked over, and Marinette was hyperventilating, leaning forward and clutching her head in her hands. Adrien was staring at her in disbelief. It took Gabriel a moment to realize why. “Oh, honestly, they didn’t _know_? It’s been eleven months, Fu, even for you that seems excessive.”

“I would have preferred waiting until after Hawkmoth was defeated, actually,” Fu said, unperturbed, “but something’s come up.”

“You just enjoy manipulating unnecessarily complicated scenarios and you know it.” Gabriel glanced back at Marinette. “Is she going to be quite alright?”

Adrien, at least, had recovered somewhat from his shock and was now attempting to calm Marinette down by patting her back, although he couldn’t really tell if this was helping or contributing to the problem. “Um… Marinette?”

“I’m fine, I’ll be fine,” she said, breathing heavily. “It’s just…” Adrien was Chat and Chat was Adrien and Chat was flirting with her _all the time_ and Adrien was telling her that she had his mother’s smile and Chat was choking up when he told her about their lost predecessor and Adrien was trying to appreciate butterflies and Marinette was about to tell Adrien that his dead mother was alive and how would he feel about her tagging along to go rescue her in a month, and there was a voice inside of her screaming at her to get it together because in about thirty seconds Adrien was going to have much heavier emotional baggage to deal with than she currently had so she’d better get over herself and quick, but it really was just a _lot_ , wasn’t it?

Marinette sat up. “I’m fine. I just-a little advance warning would have been nice, that’s all. It’s, like, the third bombshell today.” She glanced at Adrien, who gave her a quick, comforting smile that Marinette did her best to return.

Gabriel folded his arms. “Well?” he asked again.

“Sit down, Gabriel,” Fu said gently.

“What do you _want_?” he snapped, ignoring the request.

Fu took a deep breath and sighed. “Adele’s been found. She’s alive.”

The silence, the complete stillness that followed, stretched on for what felt like an eternity. It was Adrien who finally broke it.

“Mom?” he whispered. Gabriel unfroze at this, looking at his son suddenly, and then narrowing his eyes at Fu.

“If you are not _one hundred percent certain_ of that claim,” he said, his voice low and dangerous, “and you have just given my son false hope, I will-”

“An agent of the FBI,” Fu interrupted, “was sent to infiltrate a dangerous, magic-obsessed cult that’s taken residence deep in the desert of Arizona. She reported back that they have in their possession a blonde, green-eyed woman. An empath, held against her will, being forced to use her powers to help her captors weed out spies and traitors. The FBI lost two agents before they happened to send one immune to Adele’s powers. That agent went on to pick Adele’s photo out of a rather extensive lineup. Yes, Gabriel, I am certain it’s her.”

Gabriel didn’t sit down-he didn’t even slouch or sag-but something at the center of him crumpled, and he suddenly seemed far less intimidating. He didn’t speak.

“The FBI needs a month before they’ll be ready to execute a takedown of the organization,” Fu continued. “They thought we might be interested in helping.”

“What’s an empath?” Adrien asked, suddenly but unemotionally. He had a funny look on his face, like nothing was quite reaching him. Instead of answering, Fu looked at Gabriel.

“Your mother-” Gabriel paused, and it was as though just saying those two words was more than he could bear. But he pushed himself through it, and continued. “Your mother could sense the emotional states of others,” he said. “It’s how the wielders of the Butterfly miraculous find their Champions. Or, as of late, their victims.”

“Oh.” Adrien nodded, then stood. “I need a minute,” he said calmly, and then he walked out of the room.

After a minute, he still wasn’t back, nobody was saying anything, and Marinette decided enough was enough. “I’m gonna go check on him,” she said, and hurried out before anyone could stop her. She hurried through the giant mansion, up the stairs and to Adrien’s room, and poked her head in. “Adrien?”

Adrien was lying perpendicular across his bed, staring up into the middle distance. “Hi, Marinette,” he said. “Come on in.” He made no motion to get up. “You found your way around this ridiculous house pretty fast for someone who’s never been here before,” he noted.

“I’ve been here before,” she said without thinking. “Jackady, Volpina…”

“Oh. _Oh_. Right.” Adrien sighed. “I don’t… I think it’s going to take a while for me to get used to that. Sorry.”

Marinette walked over next to him and sat gingerly on the edge of his bed. “Me, too,” she admitted.

“I’m sorry I’m not more excited,” Adrien said. “On any other day I’d be bouncing off the walls, I promise. I’ve been dying to know for almost a year. But-”

“You don’t have to apologize for anything,” Marinette said gently. “The news about your mother, it’s so much bigger. I get that.” She leaned back, lying next to Adrien, and turned her head to look at him. “Do you want to talk about it?” After a moment, Adrien nodded.

“Have you ever realized that… that something you thought was true was just something you were telling yourself you thought?” he asked. “That it was just a nice thing to believe about yourself?”

“I don’t know,” Marinette said, not sure what he meant. “Maybe.”

“I always told myself I believed she was still alive somewhere,” Adrien explained, not looking at her. “That she was just missing. We had a funeral and everything, but I told myself that I wasn’t giving up on her, not in my heart. But… but now that I _know_ she’s out there, I’m realizing I already gave up on her. Years ago, I think. I just didn’t want to admit it, because she wouldn’t have given up on me.”

“Adrien, it’s been _four years_. You can’t blame yourself for doubting, anybody would.”

Adrien shook his head. “No, not her. She was…” he trailed off.

“Optimistic?”

“ _Stubborn_. And fierce, and wild, and-I mean, not usually, usually she was gentle and nice, but if something was wrong she would-she’s the only person in my life that I’ve ever seen stand up to my father. And he _listened_. If-it’s like, if she ever got into a staring contest with reality, reality would’ve blinked first, you know?”

“Yeah?”

“Which-look, I’m not saying that she and my father fought all the time. I mean, they did, but it, I don’t know, it worked for them. He was different back then, with her around.” Adrien took a deep breath and let it out. He was still lying back on the bed, they both were, but he was starting to wave his hands around expressively as he talked. “I’ve been slowly realizing, over the past year, after going to school and making friends and seeing families like yours and Nino’s, that things weren’t actually _good_ before she left. I basically never left the house, I didn’t have any friends except for Chloe-but before she disappeared, it never really got to me. It was, I don’t know, like we had a special connection or something. Does that sound silly?”

“No, of course not.”

Adrien shrugged, but he seemed to be doing better. “Well, I don’t know, maybe everyone feels that way about their mother when they’re younger, but it was like she always knew when something was bothering me, and she never let it get too bad. If being cooped up was getting to me, she’d arrange for some kind of trip or something. If I was feeling sad she always knew, even if I wasn’t saying anything, even if I was smiling through it, she always… she always…” Adrien’s face fell suddenly and Marinette frowned, concerned.

“What’s wrong?”

“She was an empath,” he whispered. “She-it wasn’t a special connection at all, she was just using magic. God, that must sound so _stupid_ now.”

“Oh, Adrien, no, of course it-”

“At least when my father was handling me I could tell.” Marinette had never, in the year that she’d known him, heard Adrien sound so bitter about anything. Or Chat, for that matter. She bit her lip, desperately trying to think of something to say.

“Adrien… Adrien, look at me.” He turned his head, and Marinette looked him right in the eye. “Adrien, magic might have given your mother an extra boost for telling whenever you were upset, but knowing what to _do_ about it-that was because she was your mother and she loved you.”

Adrien looked at her for a while, the seconds ticking by, and then he took a shaky breath and nodded. “Yeah, you’re right,” he agreed. “I just wish I knew how to feel about all of this, that’s all.”

Their hands found each other on the bedspread, seemingly of their own volition, and their fingers intertwined. Marinette squeezed Adrien’s hand.

“You don’t have to know how you feel right away,” she said. “You can take your time with it.”

Adrien nodded. “Would you mind staying up here with me a little longer, before we go back downstairs and deal with everything?”

“Of course not,” Marinette said, and they lay next to each other in comfortable silence for a long while, the sunlight slowly fading and turning the walls of the room bright pink and orange, the sounds of one another’s breathing steadying them before they returned once more unto the breach.


	5. Getting Ready

Gabriel Agreste looked at the Peacock Miraculous laying on the desk in front of him and scowled. He picked it up again. He dropped it back on the table. He’d done this about a dozen times by now and it still. Wouldn’t. Activate.

“You’re resisting it,” Fu said gently.

“I wonder why,” Gabriel replied dryly. “Perhaps it’s the knowledge that I never should have had it to begin with.”

Fu sighed. “What I said the last time we spoke… it was unfair. I don’t know if you can understand what it’s like, exactly, to do a job well for over a century and a half-and then to fail, utterly, twice in one week. And yours, that was the more painful of the two. At least the Butterfly Miraculous was lost in the line of duty, but the Peacock-”

“I cannot begin to imagine caring, for even one second,” Gabriel interrupted, his voice level, “about the loss of your little trinkets. We lost Adele. Perhaps that didn't mean as much to you. It meant everything to me.”

“It meant a great deal to me,” Fu said, “but perhaps I accepted it too readily. I'm starting to wonder if I’ve been alive too long.”

To this, Gabriel said nothing. He simply picked the clip up and dropped it again.

“You were a good hero once,” Fu told him. “You can be one again.”

“All I was ever good for as a hero,” Gabriel said as he tried again to activate the Miraculous, “was protecting Adele. And at that, I have already failed.”

Instead of responding to this, Fu leaned over and picked the Miraculous up himself. He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them, surprised.

“She’s resisting you right back,” he said. “You know, I don't think I've ever seen that before. And there isn't much I haven't seen at this point.” He handed the Miraculous back to Gabriel.

Gabriel sighed. “She always was… temperamental. I don't suppose I can blame her for being angry with me.”

Footsteps echoed outside the office, and a few moments later Adrien and Marinette reappeared. Adrien looked at the Miraculous on the table, then at his father.

“You’re… you’re going to be Paon again?” he asked hopefully.

“Evidently,” his father said, picking up the Miraculous yet again, “it is no longer up to me.”

Marinette’s eyes widened and her jaw dropped. “You _broke_ it?” she asked, incredulous.

“I did not-” Gabriel stopped himself, barely, from snapping at the girl-this girl he’d just met, who seemed to him to be nothing more than a bundle of nerves, this girl who confidently saved the city on a weekly basis, this girl who had saved his son’s life so many times by now that the number would have kept Gabriel up every night for weeks if he were to learn it. “I did not break it,” he said calmly. “I just can’t seem to activate it at the moment.”

“It's unfortunate,” Fu said, “but I wouldn't worry. I'm sure Ladybug and Chat Noir can manage without you.”

Gabriel narrowed his eyes at Fu. “Excuse me?”

“I suppose it is a much more dangerous mission than any they've been on before, but I'm sure the agents in America will do an adequate job keeping them safe. Well, relatively speaking. You and I will just have to wait in Paris for their return.”

For a moment, Gabriel was speechless. “Like _hell_ ,” he finally said, furious, “am I letting you send another member of this family halfway around the world without me. I made that mistake once before, I will never-”

Gabriel was interrupted suddenly by a bright flash of light. He blinked, stunned, and then looked at the Miraculous in his hand, which had now taken the appearance of an ordinary tie clip. He looked back at Fu, who smiled gently at him.

“What was that you were saying,” Fu asked, “about all you were good for as a superhero? Protecting your family, was it?”

“I suppose you think you’re-” Again Gabriel was interrupted, this time by a small, fast moving blur of blue, shouting incoherently and flying right at his face.

“Don't _do_ that!” she yelled angrily, smacking Gabriel on the nose as hard as she could. Gabriel sighed.

“Hello, Rajji,” he said.

“What. Were. You. _Thinking_?” the little kwami demanded, accentuating every word of the question with another blow.

“I-”

“You _rejected_ me!” Rajji flew up to look right into Gabriel’s eyes, and as suddenly as her temper had appeared it vanished. Her big eyes filled up with glittering tears, and she hugged his cheek suddenly. “I _missed_ you,” she said, crying.

“I missed you, too,” Gabriel said softly.

 

* * *

 

“The FBI wants you there a week ahead of time,” Fu told the three Miraculous holders, once everything had settled down somewhat, “in order to walk you through the plan of attack, go over the roles they'd like you to play when everything goes down, and so on.”

“A _week_?” Marinette asked. “I… don’t get me wrong, I want to go, but Chat and I can't leave Paris for a week, that's… that's, like, three akumas.” She looked at Adrien, who nodded in agreement. In response, Fu looked at Gabriel.

“How far did you get on that little project?” he asked.

“What project?”

“The one you stole my book for.”

“Oh. That.” Gabriel frowned. “Not as far as I'd hoped,” he admitted. “I'll get my notes.” He got up and walked out of the room.

Rajji stayed behind, flying up to Adrien. “You got so _big_!” she gushed.

“Oh...um, thank you? Have… have we met?”

“Oh, you haven't seen me since you were a baby,” Rajji said. “I had to start hiding when you got old enough to talk.” She pouted, clearly still not over the injustice of this.

“Well,” Adrien said slowly, “It’s… it’s nice to see you again.” Rajji made a high-pitched noise of delight in response, and then flew up and nestled herself on top of Adrien’s head. Before Adrien could react to this properly, his father returned.

“Here,” Gabriel said, handing Fu a stack of papers. “That’s everything I put together.” Fu glanced through it silently for a few minutes.

“This is impressive,” Fu finally said.

“Would it have worked?” Gabriel asked.

“No,” Fu said bluntly, “but it would have come close. I should have enough time to modify it before you depart for America.” He looked over at Adrien and Marinette, who were both watching the exchange intently, trying to figure out what was going on. “Paon,” Fu explained, “has been working on a device that can prevent Miraculous transformations on a city-wide scale. I can maintain it while the three of you are away; it should prevent Hawkmoth from akumatizing any innocent civilians in your absence.”

Marinette bit her lip. “Just… just while we’re away?” she asked. “Or-I mean, if that thing can prevent akumas, maybe we should just leave it on forever.” She didn’t sound happy about this.

Fu sighed. “We can discuss it when you return,” he said gently. “For now, we should focus on a cover story for your absence.”

“A cover story?”

“I don’t think Adrien or I need much of one,” Gabriel said. “Adele’s return will be… public. I don’t think there’s any getting around that. People will quickly conclude that we were contacted by the FBI ahead of time, and went to America to reunite as quickly as possible.”

“True,” Fu said. “But Ladybug has no reason to accompany you, and of course we’ll need some reason that her parents can accept-”

“No,” Marinette interrupted. Everyone else looked at her in surprise. “I mean-of course we need a story,” she said. “Something to tell my friends, something my parents can tell people-but I’m not lying to my parents. Not about this.”

Fu frowned. “Ladybug-”

“I get it, I get why it’s been a secret from them until now, I really do, but-and look, I really want to go, don’t get me wrong, this isn’t me trying to get out of it-but I am absolutely not going to another country to take part in a dangerous rescue mission without telling them. I’m just not.”

Fu and Gabriel exchanged a look that neither Marinette nor Adrien could quite read. “The last time a Miraculous holder revealed her secret to a family member,” Fu said, “it… ultimately, it did not end well.”

“I don’t care,” Marinette said firmly. “There’s a real chance I don’t come back from this. It’s small, but it’s there. I’m not leaving without telling them first, and that’s that.”

Fu nodded, relenting. “It is your decision,” he said simply.

 

* * *

 

Marinette spent the next ninety-six hours stressing out. Her resolve, which had been ironclad when standing up to the Guardian, had quickly become corroded by doubts, panicked thoughts of how wrong this conversation could go. Finally, though, she was forced to acknowledge that her nerves were not, in fact, going to get better the longer she put it off, and she’d better just buck up and get it over with because time was running out.

“Mom? Dad?”

It was late afternoon, and Sabine Cheng was chopping onions in the kitchen for dinner. Her husband was watching the news nearby. Neither of them looked at Marinette. “Yes, dear?” Sabine called over.

“Can I, um,” Marinette took a deep breath and let it out, “can I talk to you two about something? Something really important?”

Sabine paused for a second, then calmly put her knife down and turned around. “Turn the television off, Tom,” she said as she walked over to her daughter. “Of course you can, sweetheart,” she said gently. “Do you want to sit down first?” Marinette bit her lip and nodded without saying anything, and her mother led her to the couch. All three of them sat down, Marinette sitting between her parents as they waited patiently for her to begin.

_Breathe, just breathe._

“You know you can tell us anything, Marinette,” her father said, placing a hand on her shoulder comfortingly.

“I know, it’s just, this is… this is _big_. So, um, just… try not to freak out?”

Sabine and Tom exchanged a glance over their daughter’s head. “We’ll do our best, sweetie,” Sabine said.

“Okay. Okay. Um. I’m,” Marinette took another deep breath and finished in a rush, “I’m Ladybug. Ladybug. The superhero. Like, with the yo-yo. That one. That’s me.” She’d kept her eyes straight ahead during this, lacking the nerve to look either of her parents in the eye as she’d said it, so she was caught off guard when they both hugged her immediately.

“Oh, Marinette!” her mother said happily. “We’re so proud of you!”

“We’re so happy you told us,” her father added.

“You know we love you no matter what.”

Marinette’s first emotion was pure, intoxicating relief, and she enjoyed that for a good fifteen seconds or so, melting into her parents’ joint embrace.

Her second emotion, much less pronounced than the first, was a mild annoyance that she’d wasted all that energy being so worried about telling them, when they were taking it so well.

And her third emotion was suspicion, because now that she thought of it, they were taking it _too_ well. Despite her nerves, Marinette had known that her parents would come to accept it eventually, because they loved her unconditionally, but even for parents as loving and supportive as hers, there really should have been at least a minute of shock first, right?

Marinette stiffened, then looked at back and forth between them. “Wait. Did you two already _know_?” she asked incredulously.

Her father instantly dropped eye contact. “Well…”

“You did! And you didn’t say anything? I’ve been so _worried_ about this!”

“Oh, Marinette,” her mother said, patting her knee, “we just thought you should get to tell us in your own time, that’s all. And of course we weren’t completely sure-”

“How could you even tell at all?”

“Oh, you’ve just been so _strange_ all year, sweetheart,” her father said. “Constantly late, disappearing-”

“We knew it couldn’t be drugs or anything like that-”

“But it had to be _something_ -”

“And eventually we realized you disappear during _every_ akuma attack,” Sabine finished.

“It did take a little while to realize that was the pattern,” her father admitted, “but really, Marinette, what kind of parents would we be if we hadn’t noticed it by now?”

Marinette sighed and leaned back into the cushions of the couch. “I love you guys so much,” she said, and her parents hugged her tightly once more.

 

* * *

 

A week later, Adrien was reading alone in his room when there was a knock at the door, and a second later his father had entered. “Adrien?”

Adrien put his book aside and sat up on his bed. “Yes?”

“Before we leave next week I wanted to discuss, once more, your tendency towards self-sacrifice,” his father said. His tone was noticeably less hard than it had been the first time he’d broached the subject, but Adrien still bristled.

“I already told you-” Gabriel raised a hand, cutting him off.

“Please. I… I do understand the impulse. I remember what it was like, to be in a partnership like the one you have with Ladybug. I… well. I won’t try to talk you out of protecting her. Let me just say two things.” After a brief pause, Adrien nodded hesitantly, and Gabriel continued. “Thank you. First, I would ask that you please keep in mind that the Miraculous Ladybug spell only undoes damage caused by other Miraculouses. It will not work in Arizona, do you understand? Any consequences you suffer _will_ be permanent.”

Adrien had not, in fact, known that, and it was a chilling thought, but he simply nodded again. “All right,” he said. “I’ll remember. But… but if it’s her or me-”

“I know.” His father took a deep breath and let it out. “The second thing,” he said slowly, “is that under no circumstances are you to do the same for either myself, or… or for your mother.”

Adrien stared, unblinking, for a moment. “But we’re-the whole point is to rescue her!”

“And we will-provided it doesn’t mean losing you.”

“But-”

“Adrien. I could not live with myself if you were to die saving me. That is not an exaggeration, it is not a figure of speech. I mean it quite literally. And I am as certain as I have ever been of anything in my life that your mother feels the same way.”

Adrien wanted to protest, but there was something in his father’s expression that stopped him, a kind of raw nervousness that Adrien hadn’t seen before-not because it was fear, Adrien had seen his father afraid before, but because it was completely and totally lacking the self-confidence Gabriel Agreste otherwise always possessed.

“All right,” Adrien said, “I promise.”

 

* * *

 

Marinette took two steps into the private jet and stopped short so suddenly that Adrien, following close behind her, crashed into her back. “Sorry, sorry,” she said as she began moving again, “it’s just… _wow_. This is _amazing_.”

“Have you never been on a plane before?” Adrien asked, confused. Marinette rolled her eyes as she sat down in one of the overly cushy seats.

“I’ve been on plenty of _planes_ ,” she said defensively. “I’ve just never been on a private jet before.”

“Oh,” Adrien said, sitting down in the seat facing hers. “Are other planes different?”

Marinette stared at him incredulously for a moment, wondering why she didn’t have the urge to smack him. “You’re lucky you’re cute,” she finally said. She started pulling a few small boxes out of the large bag she’d carried on, so she didn’t see the faint blush that crept over Adrien’s cheeks. “Here,” she said, handing one of the boxes to Adrien, “my parents made cookies for everyone.” She picked up a second box and handed it to Gabriel, leaning over to reach him on the other side of the aisle. He raised an eyebrow, but accepted the box graciously before returning to staring out the window. Marinette grabbed a third box out of her bag, opened it, and started eating a cookie.

“Who’s the fourth box for?” Adrien asked. The three boxes that Marinette had taken out were all equal in their modest size, but the fourth one, which she’d left in the bag, was significantly larger.

“Your mother,” Marinette replied, swallowing her cookie. “Its, uh… they kind of went overboard with that one. Cookies, tarts, macarons, cannolis…”

Gabriel glanced over. “Your parents,” he said slowly, “learned that their only daughter was travelling to another country, to take part in a dangerous mission with the FBI to rescue a kidnapped superhero and take down a power-mad cult, and their response to that was to… bake my wife a cannoli.”

“Yeah, that’s them,” Marinette said affectionately. “Actually, their response was more like, ‘Oh, that poor woman hasn’t had a cannoli in four years’.”

“Well.” Gabriel looked back out his window. “That about sums it up, doesn’t it?”

Before Marinette could respond, she felt a slight jolt. Looking out the window, she noticed the plane had finally begun moving.

They were on their way. The rescue mission had officially begun.


	6. The Plan

The lead FBI agent for the case, Agent Michael Roberts, was waiting to greet the three superheroes as they disembarked in Arizona. He walked briskly forward, offering his hand to Gabriel Agreste.

“Mr. Agreste,” he said, barely containing his excitement, “I can’t tell you how pleased the Bureau is that you’ve agreed to assist with this mission. It is very, _very_ rare that we get the opportunity to work with superheroes such as yourself. And if I may say, on a more personal level, I am a _huge_ fan of all your work, Mr. Agreste, I’ve been following your career for years. I simply couldn’t believe it when I learned a few weeks ago that you and your wife were superheroes.”

Gabriel Agreste raised an eyebrow. “I suppose it’s too late to be assigned to an agent that doesn’t struggle quite so much with accepting basic facts of reality?” he asked. Standing right behind him, Adrien groaned quietly.

“Well, I-that is, I didn’t mean-”

“Or one who can answer a simple question? Never mind, I suppose you’ll do. Let’s get to work.” Gabriel walked briskly past the agent, towards the car waiting for them on the other side of the tarmac. Agent Roberts watched him go, looking slightly like a child who’s just seen Santa take his beard off. Adrien patted his shoulder sympathetically as he passed.

“Don’t take it personally,” he advised, “he’s like that with everybody.”

 

* * *

 

“So,” Roberts said, once they were all in the car and on their way, “to begin-”

“To begin,” Gabriel interrupted, “you’re going to tell me every single thing you can about my wife.”

“I-well, alright, that’s fair. As far as we can tell, she’s retained her empathic abilities, at least to some degree, enough so that her captors can-”

“I know all that,” Gabriel interrupted impatiently. “Tell me how she is.”

“Oh. Well. We haven’t been able to approach her directly, obviously, but from what we’ve observed she seems… better than one might expect, I suppose. She seems to be healthy. Relatively unharmed. Not depressed, or-”

“ _Relatively_ unharmed?” Agent Roberts was silent for a moment.

“Your wife,” he started slowly, “we’ve observed, has a… tendency, to push her boundaries. Not often, but occasionally. It sometimes has… physical repercussions. Nothing that would cause permanent damage, but…” he trailed off. Marinette glanced at Adrien, who had gone slightly pale upon hearing this. She took his hand and squeezed it.

Gabriel, on the other hand, looked enraged. But after a moment he unclenched his jaw, and simply said, “That sounds like Adele.” Roberts nodded.

“Your wife,” he said, “is, to put it plainly, incredible. This operation would not be even slightly possible without her. Our first agent saw her crack once, for a split second, before recovering her composure and acting as though nothing was off. Since then, nothing-no indication at all that she senses anything out of the ordinary. She’s let over thirty agents through in the past month. We have people in every key area of the compound now. This takedown is going to be near instantaneous, surgical, and it’s all thanks to her.”

Gabriel nodded. He seemed as though he were trying to think of what to ask next, but it was Adrien who broke the silence.

“How are they… the Guardian, he said they were making her help them.”

“That took a little while to figure out, actually,” Roberts said, “but one of our agents eventually noticed. It’s a geis-a very powerful kind of runic magic. They tend to be voluntary, actually, but hers was clearly placed against her will. They tend to involve some kind of tradeoff-greater power, some kind of invulnerability, that sort of thing, in exchange for some kind of price. Hers prohibits her from outright lying; our best guess is that it boosts her empathy in return. It’s been tattooed on the back of her right hand.” Again, Gabriel clenched his jaw for a moment, and looked out the window without responding. Adrien took a breath.

“But… I get that she can’t lie to them, but couldn’t she just say nothing?”

Roberts shrugged. “I don’t think they’re forcing her to talk, no. They’d probably just kill her if she stopped being of any use to them,” he said, and Adrien’s face fell. “What’s wrong?”

“She-the Guardian said she identified two agents before the one that was immune to her. Were they killed?”

“We don’t know,” Roberts admitted, “but, look, even if they were, _nobody_ at the Bureau holds your mother responsible for that. We don’t think your mother is helping these guys because she’d rather save herself. Your mother is a smart woman, she probably knows that if she stopped being useful, these guys would just find some other way of screening out traitors. She’s been cooperating with them for four years because she’s been looking for a window of opportunity, and she’s finally found it. If she was just worried about staying alive, she’d have turned us all in. She doesn’t have any reason to think the people she’s letting in are competent, that they won’t get caught some other way, and she knows it’d be the end of her if that happened, but she’s helping us anyway. She’s a brave woman doing the best she can to undermine this threat.” Adrien nodded, and they rode in silence for a little while longer.

“So,” Gabriel said a few minutes later. “The plan?”

“Well,” Roberts said, “our first priority is to get your wife out as soon as possible. We have full confidence that this takedown will go off without a hitch, but as the only innocent civilian on the inside, her safety must be secured as quickly as possible.”

Gabriel relaxed ever so slightly. “I’m glad to hear it,” he said.

“What we’d like to do,” Roberts continued, “is just have you teleport her out as quickly as the defenses are down. The problem, unfortunately, is that you’ve never been there before. I understand that your accuracy is significantly decreased when teleporting to new locations?”

“That is correct,” Gabriel said, frowning.

“Well, you showing up even one room over could compromise the entire operation, so that’s out. However-I understand from your handler that you regain accuracy when teleporting to the side of a fellow Miraculous holder?”

Gabriel looked like he wanted to protest the identification of Master Fu as his “handler”, but he let it go. “That is also correct,” he said, “although Adele-”

“Is no longer a Miraculous holder, I know. So what we need to do, I’m afraid, is send one in beforehand. Namely, her.” Roberts pointed at Marinette, whose eyes widened. “Don’t worry, we’ve already begun setting up your cover story, and you’ll be with one of our agents at all times-”

“Why can’t you just send Father in directly?” Adrien asked, interrupting. Agent Roberts raised an eyebrow.

“Son,” he said, “like I said earlier, your mother has one of the best damn poker faces I’ve ever seen in my life, but I think we might be pushing our luck just a little if we send in the husband she hasn’t seen in four years. And that’s even if we thought these guys wouldn’t recognize your father on sight as their empath’s husband, which they almost certainly would. For the same reason, we can’t send you in either. But your mother doesn’t have any personal connection to Marinette, is that correct?” Marinette nodded, then turned to Adrien.

“Don’t worry about it,” she said, sounding more confident than she felt. “I’m sure it’ll be fine.” Adrien frowned, but said nothing.

“Once inside, you’ll need to find some excuse to be as close to Adele as possible right before our inside agents take the outer defenses down. Then Gabriel will come in and grab Adele. She’ll be out before the cult has any idea what’s happening.”

“That sounds… sufficient,” Gabriel said. “I suppose it’s too much to hope that that will be the beginning and end of our involvement?”

Roberts frowned. “Well, it will be if that’s what you want,” he said. “You’re not FBI agents-hell, you’re not even American citizens. Two of you aren’t even legally adults. I couldn’t possibly force you to go any further than you want to with this. But…”

“But?”

“But… it would be _much_ easier with your assistance during the rest of the takedown. Particularly yours,” he said, looking at Adrien.

“Me?”

“Not that you aren’t just as impressive,” Roberts added, looking at Marinette. “You’re both-well. I’ve been reading up on your work in Paris, and it’s amazing. But your abilities, Miss Dupain-Cheng, are a little bit… difficult to plan around in advance. Cataclysm, on the other hand-we know exactly how we’d like to use that, if you’d agree to help us, and it would be a godsend. The takedown would be at least ten times faster and easier with it.”

“But you don’t _need_ my son for the mission to succeed,” Gabriel said.

“Father!” Adrien looked at him incredulously for a moment before turning back to Roberts. “I’ll do it,” he said firmly.

“Adrien-”

“It’s not your decision,” Adrien insisted. Gabriel looked at his son, then sighed.

“No,” he agreed begrudgingly, “I suppose it isn’t.”

 

* * *

 

Marinette’s new partner was waiting outside the base when the car pulled up. She was young, with flaming red hair and freckles on every inch of her skin, and she waved energetically as they pulled up. When Adrien exited the car, she gasped audibly. “Oh my Lord,” she breathed, “you look just like her.”

“Like… Mom?” Adrien asked, unable to keep the shock off his face completely. “You’ve seen my mom?”

The agent nodded emphatically. “Oh, sure,” she said. “I’ve been on the inside for a few weeks now, and I see her around. Not that I’ve talked to her or anything, but I’ve seen her quite a bit and if you aren’t just the spitting image of her, it’s downright uncanny.” The agent looked past Adrien, at Marinette, and grinned. “And you must be my new partner for the week!” she exclaimed. She walked over and grabbed Marinette’s hand, shaking it vigorously before Marinette had a chance to respond. “Agent Danielle Miller, and I’m ever so excited to be working with you.”

“It’s… nice to meet you, too” Marinette said, in slow and careful English. She’d been studying the language for four years now, and although she knew her accent needed work, she’d always thought her comprehension was near fluent-until about thirty seconds ago, anyway. But her new partner had the thickest Texan accent Marinette had ever heard in her life, and she wasn’t sure if she understood more than half of what the young woman said.

“My goodness,” Agent Miller said, “if you aren’t just the cutest thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life.”

“Excuse me?” Marinette asked.

“Oh, I’m sorry hon, I didn’t mean to be rude. It’s just, you’re the first superhero I’ve ever even met, it’s going straight to my head. And you’re so _young_ -I mean of course they told me you were fifteen, but it still kinda caught me by surprise, you know?”

“Yes?”

“Anyway,” Miller continued, “I’ll be your second cousin for the week, won’t that be fun? And I’m gonna be with you the entire time we’re on the inside, so don’t you worry about a thing.”

Gabriel looked the woman up and down skeptically. “How old are you?” he asked. “How long have you been working for the FBI?”

“In America it’s considered impolite to ask a lady her age,” Miller said, with a slight twinkle in her eye, “but I’m twenty-four, and I’ll have been with the Bureau a year in, let’s see here, March.”

“So… six months. You’ve been at this job for six months. Good Lord, is this your first real operation? Do you have any actual experience whatsoever?”

“Ohhh,” Miller said slowly, completely unfazed. “Uh huh. Now I see it. Now I see why your handler warned us you’d be difficult.” Before Gabriel could respond to this, she’d turned around and started heading inside. Biting back grins, Adrien and Marinette followed.

 

* * *

 

Over the next few days, Marinette and Adrien were put through training for their mission. Adrien’s was minor-he’d be in transformation for the entire time, and his combat skills while transformed were more than adequate. He mostly spent the time getting to know the agents he’d be assisting, learning the layout of the base, going over how and when to use Cataclysm, and so on.

Marinette, on the other hand, would be spending a significant amount of time undercover in her civilian form, so she needed at minimum some basic self-defense training. A little bit of being Ladybug had rubbed off on her, luckily, and she wasn’t half bad to begin with, but she was still sore at the end of each day. She also had a backstory to learn, which they’d made as close to her own personal life as possible, and Miller drilled her on it ruthlessly. She was a quick study, though, as was Adrien, and by the end of the week both Miller and Roberts were fully confident in their abilities.

The night before, Marinette couldn’t sleep. She’d called her parents right before bed-the bakery was just opening up for the day back home-and given them her repeated assurances that nothing could possibly go wrong tomorrow. But now she was lying awake, kicking herself because she knew she needed to be well-rested tomorrow, knowing she’d never forgive herself if her own exhaustion undermined rescuing Adrien’s mother. She was beginning to wonder if getting up and walking around the base might help when there was a soft knock at her door. Startled, she got up and answered it.

“Hi,” Adrien said apologetically. “I, uh, hope I didn’t wake you up.”

“No,” Marinette said, letting him in. “I couldn’t sleep.”

“Me either.” They sat down on Marinette’s bed.

“I know tomorrow’s going to go great, I really do, but it’s hard not to be nervous," Marinette confessed.

Adrien nodded. “Yeah,” he agreed. “I… I can’t begin to imagine what it’s going to be like tomorrow, seeing my mom after all this time. I’m-a part of me is a little jealous, that you’re going to see her before I do, that I won’t get to see her until it’s all over, but I know I’d be a mess if I had to see her before it was done, so I guess it’s a good thing.” Marinette nodded and put an arm around him. “And… maybe this is silly, but I don’t like that they’re splitting us up.”

“That’s not silly,” Marinette said softly. It had been bothering her too, actually. It was funny-ever since learning Adrien was Chat, she’d been struggling to connect the two in her mind. It was an awkward transition as civilians-one their best friends had picked up on right away, to their joint dismay-but as superheroes, it was a different story.

They’d had a few weeks together in Paris, of knowing, and they’d had to fight a dozen or so akumas in that time, and they’d been stunned to find that the reveal hadn’t affected their ability to work together at all. They were still the perfect team, because when they got down to business Marinette didn’t think of Chat as the cute boy she’d been in love with for a year, and Adrien didn’t think of Ladybug as his shy, talented friend from school. They were just partners. It was as easy as ever to trust one another with their lives, to know with full confidence that they could depend on one another, usually without even needing to plan ahead. They were still in perfect sync. So splitting up for a mission, even one this important, even one with dozens of FBI agents, felt…

Well, wrong.

“Can I stay here tonight?” Adrien asked shyly. “It’s completely fine if not, but… since we’re not going to be working together tomorrow…”

Wordlessly, Marinette nodded. She pulled the covers back, and they got into bed. Adrien wrapped an arm around her gently as they closed their eyes.

They were both asleep within five minutes.


	7. The Damsel

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> French translations very kindly provided by french-start.tumblr.com!

Marinette got on board the bus, following closely behind Agent Miller, and the next thing she knew she was standing outside of it again, feeling slightly dizzy, in the middle of the desert, the sun much closer to its zenith than it had been a second ago.

“You all right, hon?” Miller asked sympathetically. Marinette nodded. She’d been warned about the memory wipe in advance, of course, but it was still disorienting. She followed Miller across the yard to the compound’s entrance-Marinette had seen rough sketches of it by this point, but she hadn’t really been imagining it correctly. It stuck out like a sore thumb in the middle of the desert, looming, menacing. Marinette had the distinct impression, as she followed Miller through the front gate, that she was walking into the jaws of a beast.

Miller led her straight to the waiting area, where a single guard waited. She grinned as Miller and Marinette entered. “Danielle!” she said. “What are you doing here, they screened you weeks ago.”

“Oh, you didn’t hear? I got my cousin visiting from France, it’s why I’ve been gone for a few days. Had to go pick her up at the airport, get her settled and whatnot. They’re letting me sit in on the interview, on account of she’s so much younger than the typical recruit, and her English ain’t so hot.”

“You speak French?”

“Oui,” Miller said proudly. Her Texan accent did not get a single bit less pronounced when she switched languages. They sat down and waited for what seemed like forever to Marinette, but finally they were called in to the interrogation room.

Miller let Marinette enter first, and it was a good thing because Marinette froze when she saw Adele for the first time, and it turned out she really needed Miller to push her gently along. Adele, for her part, could not have looked less interested in Marinette’s arrival.

“Hi, Carl,” Miller said genially as she and Marinette sat down. “This here’s my second cousin, Marinette. Marinette, this is Carl, he runs the place.”

“Oh, well,” Carl said modestly, as he shook Marinette’s hand, “I wouldn’t say I _run_ anything, but I do keep things moving along.” He looked at Marinette, then back at Miller. “You know, you two don’t look related at all.”

Marinette tried not to look scared, but Miller just laughed. “I said she was my second cousin, Carl, not my twin sister! For heaven’s sake. Anyway, can’t you see the freckles?”

Carl squinted at Marinette’s face, which she tried to keep as expressionless as possible. “I do now,” he admitted. “They’re not as pronounced as yours, are they?” He picked up a folder with Marinette’s name on it. “Would you mind reminding me how she’s your cousin, exactly?”

“Oh, gosh, lemme see if I can remember. I know her daddy and my momma are cousins, I think it was my momma’s momma and her daddy’s… was it her daddy’s daddy? No, couldn’t be, ‘cause her daddy’s daddy was a Dupain and my momma’s momma was a Sullivan-that’s right, it was her daddy’s momma and my momma’s momma, they were sisters.”

“I see. And you’re close with all your second cousins?”

“Nah,” Miller said casually, “but my momma and Uncle Tom-he’s not really my uncle, I guess, but that’s what I always called him growing up-they’re close enough. Keep up with each other a few times a year at least. So a few months ago they were talking, and my momma was telling Tom about all the trouble I’d been having, supernatural-wise, and he mentioned that poor Marinette here had been having a hard time of it too, what with everything that’s been going on in Paris. And her grades have been down, she’s just been a bundle of nerves all year, poor thing, so her parents thought she could use a break and I might be, you know, a sympathetic ear, so of course I agreed right away to have her visit for a while. I mean, her parents have no idea I brought her to a place like this,” Miller added, laughing again, “but I thought it might be the perfect fit for her. I know she’s awful young, but she’s smart as a whip, and I did promise her momma I’d look after her.”

Carl had been nodding during this entire little speech, unsurprised, but at the mention of Paris, Adele had looked up and for the first time seemed actually interested in what was being said. "Que se passe-t-il à Paris?" she asked. To Marinette’s horror, her guard immediately backhanded the side of Adele’s head.

“You have been warned,” Carl said, almost wearily, “about speaking in French.”

Marinette was stunned to notice that Adele didn’t even look surprised at being struck, just annoyed. “What’s. Going on. In Paris?” she repeated, in slow and careful English.

“Nothing that you need to worry about,” Carl said. He looked at Marinette, and Marinette wasn’t quite able to mask her reaction. “Is something the matter?” he asked.

“I, uh…” Marinette gulped and wracked her brain for something to say. “Are we not allowed to use French?” she asked. “Because my English, it isn’t, um, great.”

“Oh, goodness, no, that’s not it at all,” he said. He chuckled softly and looked at Miller. “Isn’t she precious? Poor thing, I see what you mean about her needing a break. No, dear,” he looked back at Marinette and his voice took on a tone that might have been comforting if it had been coming from any other source, “you’re free to use whatever language you please. You won’t find a lot of people who speak French apart from your cousin, but there are a lot of members here who prefer Spanish, actually, and that’s perfectly fine. Besides, we wouldn’t dream of mistreating any of our members-we’re a family here. That rule is only for the empath.”

Marinette glanced at Adele, and then looked back at Carl. “Oh,” she said.

“I suppose it might seem a bit shocking, the way she’s treated, but the thing you have to understand about her is that she isn’t really capable of understanding what we’re trying to do here.” Adele rolled her eyes at this, but said nothing. “She’s constantly trying to undermine what we do. Don’t worry, she’s not actually able to, but goodness does she try. About three years ago she got it into her head to start switching between English and French in an attempt to get around her inability to lie-saying most of her sentence in English, but muttering negations in French under her breath, that kind of thing. We picked up on it right away, and now she’s not allowed to use French at all. And we have to be quite firm with her, unfortunately, because she just doesn’t respond to anything else.”

Marinette nodded slowly, hoping she still looked like a nervous teenager and not a rage-filled heroine that was now eagerly counting the minutes until she could help burn this disgusting organization to the ground.

“Now, Marinette,” Carl continued, “I would like to hear a bit about your personal experiences. I know it can be hard to share them, but it’s important for us to know what brings you here, why it is that you believe in our cause.”

Marinette nodded. “Um… it’s kind of a lot of little things, really. Well… not _little_ , but it’s a lot of things. I’m not sure I remember them all in order-”

“That’s perfectly fine,” Carl said gently. “You just tell them to me in the order that feels right to you.”

Marinette nodded and began to go through the version of the past year that she’d rehearsed. “Well, um… my friend got turned into a slime monster, right, and she stuck us all in these weird cocoon things, so that was… and then this other time, I got turned into a mummy? And it was, like, a lot of us-and the guy controlling us, he wanted to sacrifice my best friend to some dead god or something. And this other time, uh, my uncle was visiting and he wound up trying to turn one of my classmates into soup. I’m, like, honestly not sure if he would have eaten her or not. Oh, and last Valentine’s Day my friend was just _super_ mean to me-okay, I know that doesn’t sound like a big deal compared to the other stuff, and she didn’t mean it obviously, but it still kind of ruined the day, you know? And, um… I mean, I could probably list a ton of things like that, I think a lot of people in Paris could. But-”

“Okay, seriously,” Adele interrupted, “what the hell is going on in Paris?”

“What do you care?” Carl asked. “You’re never going to see it again.”

“My _son_ is there,” Adele said angrily.

“You’re never going to see him again, either,” Carl said lightly. “And if you interrupt this interview one more time, you _will_ regret it, I promise.” Adele clenched her jaw, looked down, and grabbed the edge of the table, her knuckles turning white. Carl turned back to Marinette. “I apologize for the interruption,” he said graciously. “Please, continue.”

“Um… well, the thing is, the worst thing is, is that I haven’t been directly targeted yet. And almost _everyone_ in my class has at this point, so it feels like-it feels, um…Comment dit-on ‘inévitable’ en anglais?" she asked Miller.

“Inevitable, it's the same in English,” Miller told her.

“Right… it feels inevitable, you know? And just waiting, day after day, for it to happen, it was-I was losing sleep, I was skipping classes, and the more scared I got about it, the more inevitable it felt, you know? Because fear is-everybody’s afraid to be afraid now. So, um, when my parents suggested I live with my cousin for a while, that sounded-I’ve never lived away from home, but it just seemed like someone throwing me a life raft, you know? And when she told me about you guys, and how you take in people who have been turned into victims by magic, and give them the power to do something about it, that sounded-I want that.”

Carl nodded thoughtfully. “I’m glad to hear it.” He turned to Adele. “Well? You’ve been more than enough trouble during this, care to make up for it by doing your job?”

“I don’t detect any deception from the girl,” Adele replied, clearly still angry about not being told what was happening in her home city. “No deception, no hidden agenda, I detect nothing that would indicate a threat to your organization. And nothing like that from her cousin, either.”

Carl nodded and turned back to Marinette. “Congratulations,” he said. “You’re officially a part of the family now.” He reached across the table to shake her hand. “I’m afraid I’m not sure _exactly_ what role we’ll find for you while you’re here, but I’m sure we’ll think of something. Actually…” he looked back at Adele thoughtfully. “How would you feel about guarding the empath?”

It took all of Marinette’s self control to keep her jaw from dropping. “Um… what?”

“It’s not a popular duty I’m afraid, it’s mostly very boring, and she likes to get on people’s nerves, but you do speak French, which might be an asset if she tries something _clever_ again.”

“Oh, um, yeah, sure, that sounds… neat.”

“Lovely. Then your cousin can help you get settled in.” He looked at Miller. “You know where we keep the empath when we’re not using her, right?”

“Sure do,” Miller said. She patted Marinette on the back. “C’mon, hon, let’s get a move on, I’ll get you checked in.”

The two didn’t speak until they were far, far away from the interrogation room, walking down an otherwise deserted corridor, and then Miller grinned at Marinette. “Well, I guess finding an excuse to be near Adele when everything goes down is going to be easier than we thought.” She laughed. “You know,” she said, “I’m really gonna miss having a luck-based superheroine for a partner.”

 

* * *

 

“Steve!” Miller shouted at one of the guards stationed outside Adele’s cell, as the two approached it about an hour later. “Got your replacement here.”

“Thank God,” Steve replied. “Maybe I’ll actually get to do something interesting around here. Uh, no offense,” he added, looking at Marinette. He looked back through the bars at Adele, who was lying on a cot reading a book. “How ‘bout your new guard, huh?” he asked her. “Speaks French, what do you think of that?”

“Sounds great,” Adele said, not looking up. “Maybe when _she_ gets me a book, it’ll actually be in a decent language.”

Steve looked back at Marinette and smiled. “Good luck,” he said wryly, before heading off. As his footsteps echoed down the hall, Adele looked over the top of her book casually, watching until he disappeared around a corner. Once he was gone, her entire demeanor changed.

“ _Finally_ ,” Adele said in French, tossing her book aside and hurrying over to the bars of her room. “I have been letting you people in for a month now, and you haven’t said one goddamn word to me. Are you finally going to tell me what’s going on here, or what?”

“I’m afraid not, ma’am,” Miller said before Marinette could respond. For a moment, Adele was speechless.

“Excuse me?” she asked. The ambient temperature seemed to drop a few degrees.

“I appreciate everything you’ve done for us, and I appreciate your frustration, I truly do, but I can’t compromise the security of this mission by letting you know any details. You’ll just have to be patient a little while longer.”

Adele raised an eyebrow. “I don’t think you do appreciate what this has been like for me. I have been in this place for _four years_.”

“I know.”

“And this is the first real glimpse of hope I’ve had in that time, do you understand that? I-do you know what it’s like to know for certain that you’re going to die, surrounded by your enemies, without ever seeing the people you love ever again? To just, on every level accept that as your fate?”

“I’m afraid I don’t, ma’am.”

“Well, I reached that point about two years ago. And I’ve had to get up every morning from that day to this and keep on living all the same. And finally, finally, a month ago, someone comes through that I can’t read. Someone I can slip through-I don’t know who she is, I don’t know what she wants, but I take it on blind faith that she’s here to put a stop to what’s happening. And then, after her, more and more start showing up. I’m letting in almost ten a week, it seems like. And the hope I wasn’t letting myself feel at first, it grows and grows-and then _nothing_! You’ve been doing nothing for a month! And you don’t even give me the courtesy of a heads-up, and I have been risking my life for you people, you get that, right?”

“I certainly do, ma’am.”

“Not that it’s much of a life to risk,” Adele added bitterly, “but all the same.”

“Ma’am, my heart bleeds for you, it really does, but I’m afraid your peace of mind isn’t more important to me than the work I’m doing here. I can’t tell you anything.”

Adele glared at the agent and set her jaw. “Fine,” she said angrily. “Luckily for me, I don’t need you to tell me anything. I just need you to stand there.”

“Pardon?”

“To begin… are you with a private organization? Or the government?” Neither Marinette nor Agent Miller answered, but Adele nodded. “Government,” she said. “Well, that’s comforting. I was half worried it might just be some rival cult in the middle of a takeover. So, CIA? FBI? FBI. Okay. Now we’re getting somewhere.”

Miller sighed as she realized the potion she and Marinette had taken earlier, the one that blocked Adele’s empathy, would have worn off by now. “Ma’am, please stop that,” she said politely.

“It’s interesting,” Adele said, ignoring the request. “You’ve clearly had some kind of training in this regard. If it were just you, I’d have a very difficult time doing a reading, but her,” Adele pointed to Marinette, “she’s clear as a bell. She’s barely had any training at all, right?” She studied Marinette for a moment. “Since when does the FBI hire thirteen year olds?” she asked.

“I’m fifteen,” Marinette snapped before she could stop herself. Oh, God, that was officially the first thing she'd said to Adrien’s mother. Adele raised an eyebrow.

“The question stands,” she said. “What is an untrained fifteen year old doing on this very dangerous mission? What, is it Bring Your Daughter To Work Day at the FBI or something?”

“Ma’am, I sincerely hope I did not just hear you imply that I look old enough to be the mother of a fifteen year old girl,” Miller said. Adele didn’t answer, but instead just stood there silently in thought for a moment, before her expression narrowed.

“You’re not… you're not a _superhero_ , aren’t you?” Marinette started to turn bright red as Adele's eyes widened. “Well, _that_ is interesting. Of course, now the question is, why on earth would you volunteer to help the FBI?”

“Ma'am, I am really gonna have to ask you to leave my partner alone.”

“Oh, but we have so much in common,” Adele said mockingly. “We’re both from Paris, we’re both-well, I'm not a superhero anymore, but I used to be, we…” Adele trailed off before narrowing her eyes yet again at Marinette. “Wait. A superhero from Paris… do you have a _Miraculous_?” Again, there was no need to wait for Marinette to give any response. “And you came here? Well, I certainly hope you people know what you’re doing, because if I just spent four years in captivity in order to keep my Miraculous away from Henrik only for you to come along with and hand him another one, I am going to be extremely put out. Which one do you have, anyway? Fox? Bee? Too much to hope you found mine, I suppose… good Lord, you don’t have one of the big ones, do you? Jesus, you do. Do you have any idea what kind of damage Henrik could do with a major Miraculous? I rejected mine because with it he could have taken over the world in a week, with _yours_ it probably wouldn’t even take him until the end of the day, and you-”

“Oh my God,” Marinette exclaimed, finally snapping, “I cannot believe I have been listening to everyone singing your praises nonstop for like a month now, you are the most annoying person I have ever met in my _life_.”

It took about three seconds for Marinette’s brain to catch up with what she’d just said, and then her face turned bright red as Adele was mentally struck with a tidal wave of mortification. For a minute there was silence, and then Adele took a breath and let it out slowly.

“I’m sorry,” she said, and Marinette was surprised that the woman sounded like she really meant it-until she remembered that of course Adele meant it, because otherwise she wouldn’t have been able to say it at all. “I-look. It’s been a stressful month. On top of a stressful four years, actually. And I haven’t…” Adele sighed and took a moment to organize her thoughts. “I haven’t had anyone to interact with in four years other than my enemies. I guess… I guess I’m a little rusty on how to interact with allies.”

Marinette nodded, and her mortification died down considerably. “I understand,” she said softly, and Adele gave her a hesitant smile.

“Okay,” Adele said. “No more questions. It’s frustrating, but I’ll try to respect that you’re just trying to be professional, and I’ll… I’ll try to trust that you know what you’re doing. Can we just talk? I haven’t had a friendly conversation in a long time.” Marinette nodded, and Adele smiled at her. God, it really was Adrien’s smile, wasn't it? “So… fifteen, huh? That’s-my son’s fifteen. Well, I think he is. He might be sixteen by now, actually, I don’t have a great sense of what the date is, his birthday might have already come and gone.”

“No, not for another three weeks,” Marinette said without thinking. Next to her, Miller groaned as Adele tensed once again and squinted suspiciously at Marinette.

“How do you,” she asked slowly, “know when my son’s birthday is? That information could not _possibly_ have been deemed relevant enough to be included in your mission briefing.”

“Oh. Um. Well, no, but I, uh… I know your son,” Marinette mumbled. “From school.” Adele’s eyes widened.

“Adrien’s going to school?” she asked, her voice almost a whisper. Marinette nodded. “That’s-you probably don’t understand how much that means. I was worried, after I didn’t come back, that his father would-” Adele sighed in relief and leaned against the bars. “And you know him? What’s he like?”

“Perfect,” Marinette said with a dreamy sigh. “I-I mean-” She turned bright red again, and now Adele seemed like she was fighting the urge to smile.

“I meant,” she said gently, “what’s he like at school? Does he have a lot of friends, does he do well, does he seem… happy?”

“Oh… oh, yeah, he’s friends with everybody,” Marinette said. “I mean, _everybody_ ,” she added, thinking of Chloe. “Everybody loves him, teachers and students-he's the most kind, helpful, encouraging person anybody knows.”

“Really?” Adele asked. She was practically beaming, and her eyes were getting wet. “That's… that's really good to hear.” She sighed. “Even if this all goes horribly wrong and we all die painfully, just getting to hear all that first is more than I'd been expecting.”

Marinette blinked. “That, um… that maybe sounds a lot less optimistic than you think it does,” she said. Adele laughed.

“Optimistic. I think I used to be optimistic once. I'm not sure.” Adele looked Marinette up and down. “I suppose that's kind of your thing, right? You're the Ladybug?”

Marinette nodded. “Yeah, that's-”

“ _Wait_.” Adele’s expression fell hard and fast as she looked at Marinette. “You have a crush on my son.”

“What? No, I-” Adele glared at Marinette, and the completely pointless lie died in her throat. “Well… maybe. So?”

“You. Ladybug. Ladybug has a crush on my son. _My_ son-the son of Butterfly and-” she cut herself off with a deep, shaky breath.

“… yes?” Marinette asked. Adele closed her eyes and leaned her head against the bars.

“He's got the other one, doesn't he?” Adele asked in a pained whisper. Marinette’s eyes grew wide with shock.

“Um.”

“The… the ring, right? Jesus. Is he _here_?” Marinette said nothing, but she didn't need to. “I'm… I need to sit down.” She crossed the small room to her bed and sat down with a heavy thump, staring numbly at the middle distance.

Miller glanced at her watch. “Two minutes,” she muttered to Marinette.

“Oh. Great,” Marinette said, wondering how much more disaster could possibly be squeezed into that time. But Adele stayed where she was, stunned, and didn’t say anything more. She was still staring at nothing in particular when Gabriel Agreste-when _Paon_ -appeared right next to Marinette, out of thin air.

“Where’s-” he looked around, and his eyes locked on the bars behind Marinette, and then on his wife. She looked up.

“Gabriel?” she whispered, and something about it broke Marinette’s heart, because she’d been wondering this whole time if Adele would be overjoyed or devastated upon seeing her husband for the first time after the worst four years imaginable, but right now she just sounded _confused_.

Gabriel disappeared and reappeared, kneeling by her side. “Adele? Adele, I’m getting you out of here, understand?”

“Gabriel?” she repeated, her tone unchanged. Gabriel sighed and placed a hand on each of her shoulders. In the next instant, they were both gone.


	8. In Distress

“That,” Marinette said slowly, after Adrien’s parents had disappeared, “is not even a little bit like how I imagined meeting Adrien’s mother would go.”

Miller laughed. “Hon, if you're worried about earning brownie points with the future in-laws, I'd say it doesn't get much better than rescuing one of ‘em from an evil cult.”

Marinette blushed. “Well, maybe,” she mumbled. Miller patted her shoulder.

“Come on,” she said, “let’s go join the others.”

 

* * *

 

“Are you alright?” Gabriel asked, looking down at his wife, his face full of concern, his hands still firmly grasping her shoulders.

“I… what just happened?” The lights were brighter, the room was warmer, and the emotional signatures around Adele had all changed completely in an instant.

“You're out,” Gabriel told her. “We’re miles away from the compound, we’re at an FBI base. They're the ones who took down the anti-teleportation field, so I could get in and get you.”

“I can't… I can't believe…”

“I know,” Gabriel said softly.

“I can't believe you let our son have a _Miraculous_ ,” she finished. Gabriel blinked, stunned.

“How did you-” he was cut off as Adele threw her arms around him suddenly and clung to him as though for dear life.

“Oh, God, Gabriel, I was so sure I was going to die in that place,” she whispered. He wrapped his arms around her as tightly as he dared.

“You're safe now,” he promised. She nodded, and pressed her head against his chest.

Agent Roberts stuck his head in the room. “Mr. Agreste, we could really use your help with-” The rest of the request died in his throat as Gabriel shot him the coldest glare Roberts had ever seen in his life.

“May I have a _moment_ with my wife first?” he asked, although it was clear from his tone that he wasn't really asking.

“Of-of course, I'll just-” Roberts disappeared quickly.

Sighing, Gabriel turned back to Adele. He put a hand to her cheek and pressed his forehead against hers. “I would not leave your side,” he whispered fiercely, “for _anything_ less than this. But…”

“Go,” Adele told him. She kissed his cheek. “Keep our son safe.”

 

* * *

 

“Cataclysm went off without a hitch,” Miller reported to Marinette, listening to the earpiece she'd smuggled in and donned once the takedown was officially underway. Marinette breathed a sigh of relief. “You’re still up for sticking with us through the end, right? Never know when we might need a Lucky Charm.”

Marinette nodded. “Absolutely,” she said. “Tikki, spots on!”

 

* * *

 

“Can I get you anything, Mrs. Agreste?” a young agent asked Adele, who’d sat down on the room’s small couch once Gabriel had left and had been waiting there quietly ever since. She stared up at him blankly for a second. “Mrs. Agreste?”

“Sorry, it’s-it’s just been a really long time since anybody called me that,” she said. “I’m fine.”

“You’re shaking.”

“Am I?” Adele held her hand up and looked at it. “Oh. So I am.”

The agent hesitated for a moment, then put a hand gently on her shoulder. “How about I get you a blanket?” he suggested. Adele nodded without looking up, and the young man ran off. She didn't notice he'd returned until the blanket was around her shoulders.

“Anything else? Tea? Or, maybe, uh-”

“How's it going?”

“Sorry?”

“The-the mission. Whatever my husband and son are doing right now, how is it going?”

“Oh. Really well, I think. They should be back soon. They’re helping take down the security systems so agents can neutralize the base. Last time I checked everything was going perfectly. The whole takedown shouldn't take longer than an hour, but your family should be back earlier than that.”

“Oh. Good.” Adele tapped her fingers nervously against her knees for a moment, and then looked the agent in the eye. “I don’t know what’s harder to believe,” she said in a rush, “that I’m out of that place, or that my son is in it.”

“Your son is very safe,” the agent promised her, and Adele could tell that he truly believed it, which helped somewhat. “He’s with dozens of agents. I’m sure he’ll be back here soon.”

Nodding, Adele pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders.

 

* * *

 

“Twenty-four rooms secured now,” Miller told Ladybug, as they moved through the lower levels of the compound with about twenty other agents. “Only fifteen more to go.”

“This has been so… _methodical_ ,” Ladybug said, impressed. “I haven’t gotten to do anything, really.”

“That’s a good thing,” Miller said, as the group entered a large storage room. “Anyway, we couldn’t have done the earlier stuff without you. You’ve more than done your-” she stopped talking suddenly, as the room was plunged into darkness. “Hang on.” Marinette heard some shuffling, and then the click of a flashlight. Nothing. “Shoot,” Miller muttered, as the agents around them started shouting back and forth to one another. “We must’ve triggered a blackout spell when we entered; sweeps usually catch those, but not always.” She sighed. “All right, Marinette, protocol says we just gotta hang tight for a little while until the backup team can reach us and disable it, and hopefully not too many people are getting away in the meantime. It’ll slow things down, but-”

“In that case,” Ladybug said, “why don’t I just take care of it right now?”

There was a surprised pause. “Can you do that?”

“Oh, sure,” Ladybug said, more confidently than she felt. “I’ve trained for this. Kind of.” She took a deep breath. “Lucky Charm!” A second later, something small landed in her hand.

“What’d you get?”

“Um…” Ladybug ran her hands over the object. “It’s kind of “Y” shaped, and… oh! It’s a slingshot. You don’t happen to have, like, a small rock or something on you?”

“Uh… penny?”

“Thanks.” Ladybug reached towards the sound of Miller’s voice, found her hand, and took the proffered coin.

“How do you know where to aim that thing?” Miller asked.

“I don’t.” Ladybug took another deep breath. She focused on centering herself as she placed the coin in the slingshot’s pocket and pulled back. _Be exactly where you should be, do exactly what you should do_ , she reminded herself. She cleared her mind, took aim blindly, and released.

A second later, there was the faint sound of shattering glass, and she could see again. A cheer broke out amongst the other agents, and they started moving forward again.

Miller grinned and looked up, towards where the noise had occurred. “Looks like you broke whatever was generating the blackout,” she said. “I gotta say, I really am gonna miss having such a lucky partner. You sure you gotta go back to France when this is all done?”

 

* * *

 

It had been less than forty minutes when the commotion outside the room started to take on a more excited quality, and the general emotional atmosphere that Adele was sensing was happy, relieved, triumphant. Evidently, the mission had succeeded.

Bracing herself, Adele shrugged the blanket off, stood up, and continued to wait.

Eventually, there was the faint echo of running, the kind of frenetic footfalls that belong exclusively to the domain of youth. They grew louder, and carried with them the growing sense of desperate anticipation, and suddenly the door of the room had flown open, and he was standing there, breathing heavily.

“Mom?” Adrien said, and Adele realized how foolish it had been, to think she might have ever gotten through this without crying.

“Oh, Adrien,” she whispered, tears immediately falling freely as she tried and failed to keep her voice from breaking, “you… you got so _tall_!”

And then he was in her arms, and they were clinging to each other, both sobbing, and she was frantically kissing his face, kissing the top of his head, and he was so familiar and so different, and Adele was just desperately trying to relearn every inch of her son.

 

* * *

 

“That’s it,” Miller told Marinette. “The building is officially secure. All cult members have been knocked out, and they’re getting transported as we speak to a secure facility.” She patted Marinette on the shoulder. “You did an amazing job today, hon,” she told the girl earnestly. Marinette nodded, but didn’t speak. “Something wrong?”

“It’s just… the girl I was pretending to be, earlier today. She wasn’t evil, she was just scared and she didn’t know what else to do, you know? How many people here are like that?”

Miller sighed. “More than you’d like, I’m sure. But we’ll do our best to separate them from the rest, okay? This isn’t the first organization the Bureau’s had to take down that preys on people victimized by magic. We know how to tell the victims from the villains. And the guys running this place, Marinette, they are some serious villains, I promise you that. We did a real good thing today-not just for the sake of your friend’s mom, either, but for everybody.”

 

* * *

 

“Everything still feels so… _unreal_ ,” Adele confessed, wedged tightly between Adrien and Gabriel on the waiting room’s couch. “I'm having a hard time believing this isn't all just some dream or trick or something.”

“It's real, Mom,” Adrien promised her.

“Spoken like a true figment of my imagination,” Adele said, but she was smiling, and running her fingers through Adrien’s hair.

Gabriel frowned. “Is there anything either of us could do to make this seem more… real?”

“Um… you could tell me what you think of my outfit,” Adele suggested, gesturing to her shapeless tee and oversized sweatpants. Gabriel leaned back and looked her up and down.

“It's hideous,” he said matter-of-factly.

“Father!”

“If they had done nothing else,” Gabriel continued, “forcing you to dress like this for four years would alone be unforgivable. But don't worry, I brought about half your wardrobe along with us. The good half.”

Adele sighed happily and wrapped her free arm around her husband. “Oh, good,” she said, melting into him, “it really is you.”

 

* * *

 

“Hang on,” Miller said, putting a finger to her earpiece. “Copy that, sir.” She looked at Marinette. “One of the teams missed a security generator-it’s disabled, but not permanently. If we don't break it now it could boot itself back up and make things difficult for the cleanup crew.” Marinette glanced back down the hallway, towards the exit. “Should only take five minutes, hon, I promise.” Nodding, Marinette turned around and followed Miller back the way they'd come.

 

* * *

 

“Shouldn't Marinette be back by now?” Adrien asked, his arms still wrapped around his mother.

“Oh, God, Marinette,” Adele said, sounding slightly mortified as she covered her mouth with her hand. “I hope she's not avoiding me. I did _not_ make a good first impression on that poor girl.”

“Oh, neither did I!” Adrien said brightly.

“Really?” Adele asked, surprised. “Must run in the family-I made a horrible first impression on your father, too.”

“Nonsense,” Gabriel said.

“Gabriel, I slammed a fist on your desk and yelled at you. A _lot_.”

“And I've been in love with you ever since,” her husband insisted, kissing her forehead. Adele laughed.

“Alright, I guess I stand correct-” she stopped talking suddenly, and tensed.

“Mom?”

“Something's wrong,” Adele whispered, tightening her grip on her family.

Gabriel frowned. “What is?”

“I don't know, but… but every agent in this place is suddenly _very_ upset.” Her breathing started to get faster, until Gabriel placed a steadying hand on her shoulder.

“Whatever it is,” he said, “it can't hurt you here, I promise. Let's find someone who can-” he was cut off as the door burst open, and Agent Roberts entered quickly, his face grave.

“I'm afraid we have a problem,” he said.

 

* * *

 

“Are you sure this is the right room?” Marinette asked, looking around. “There isn't anything here.”

“Hmm. One sec.” Miller held a wrist up. “Sir, can you confirm which room has the generator?” A pause as she listened to the reply. “The one you _asked me to disable_.” Another pause. “Yes, you said-” Miller stopped talking suddenly as her face went white and she looked at Marinette with a growing horror. “We need to leave. _Now_.” She grabbed Marinette's hand and pulled her through the door into the hallway. About ten steps down it, and Miller suddenly stopped short and shoved Marinette up against the wall. A shot rang out, and Miller immediately fell.

“Agent Miller! Oh, God-Tikki, spots on!” Marinette shouted frantically.

Or at least, that's what she would have done if she could have moved at all.

 

* * *

 

“You _didn't get Henrik_?” Gabriel demanded.

“We thought we did,” Roberts said. “There was a decoy spell on one of the lower-ranking members, and by the time it wore off, he’d…”

“Grabbed Ladybug,” Adrien finished in a whisper.

“He grabbed Marinette,” Roberts corrected. “If he’d grabbed _Ladybug_ , this would probably already be finished. But she’d needed a Lucky Charm earlier, and it seems she either wasn’t able to transform back, or didn’t think it necessary after the base was, ostensibly, secured.”

“I should have been there, I never should have let you split us up,” Adrien said, horrified. Adele pulled her son into a tight embrace as Gabriel looked at Roberts.

“So what’s happening?” he asked.

“Well, Henrik tried to get away, but Miller was able to call it in before losing consciousness, so every agent was on it immediately. He’s right outside the base, and we have him completely surrounded-there's no possible way he can get away. But he’s using a duplication illusion. There’s at least two hundred of him, and no way to tell which is the real Henrik. And our prepared knockout spells aren’t wide-range enough to hit every copy at once-and if we don’t hit _every_ copy at once, we risk missing the real Henrik, which puts Marinette in too much danger. We’re working on putting something together, but it’ll take at least an hour. So we’re currently in a hostage standoff, essentially.”

“What are his demands?” Gabriel asked. Roberts sighed.

“Well, the problem is, he's refusing to issue them to us. He wants a go-between.” He looked at Adele. “Namely, you.”

“What?” Gabriel asked, infuriated. “ _Why_?”

“Because I can't lie,” Adele said. “Right?” Roberts nodded, and Adele sighed. “All right, let’s go.” She started for the door, but her husband held her back.

“Adele, no-you shouldn't have to deal with that monster ever again.”

Adele looked back at Gabriel and raised an eyebrow. “Last time I checked,” she said wryly, “a lot of things in my life shouldn't have happened. I'm going.”

“No, absolutely not,” Gabriel said, not releasing her arm. “We just got you out, you're not going back there.”

“Gabriel,” Adele said steadily, “if you or any other person on this earth ever again tries to keep me somewhere I don't want to stay, they _will_ regret it, do you understand me?”

Sighing, Gabriel released her. “Of course,” he said. Adele took his hand.

“It’s a hostage situation,” she said. “We were always good at those.”

 

* * *

 

“Finally,” every Henrik said in unison, grinning, as Adele exited the base and walked past the agents surrounding Henrik’s illusions, “my empath arrives.”

“I'm not your anything anymore, Henrik,” Adele said calmly.

“That’s true,” Henrik admitted. He looked down at Marinette, who glared back at him silently. “I'd say I've traded up, though, wouldn't you? Ladybug herself, who would have guessed? It almost makes the loss of your Miraculous four years ago worth it.”

“There is no version of this,” Adele said levelly, “that ends with you leaving here with that girl.”

“It's either than or I'm forced to kill her, I'm afraid. I'm certainly not going to make the same mistake I made with you. If she doesn't hand her Miraculous over, I'll just kill her and take it.”

“You won't survive to claim it,” Adele pointed out, gesturing to the agents surrounding them.

“Well, she’ll still be dead, you don't want that.”

“Henrik. You insisted I come out here because I can't lie, so understand that I mean what I'm about to say. I would shoot that girl in the head myself if it was the only way to keep you from claiming the Ladybug Miraculous.”

“Ah, yes, I did insist on you, didn't I? Thanks for the reminder, I almost forgot to ask. How long did they tell you to stall for?” Adele folded her arms and said nothing. “Do I need to spell it out? Fine. If you do not answer my question in the next ten seconds, I will-”

“An hour,” Adele interrupted, unable to keep the anger out of her voice entirely.

“An hour from the start of this conversation?”

“An hour from when you grabbed the girl, I think.”

“Any other FBI plans I should be worried about?”

“No,” Adele said. “Happy?”

“Quite. There isn't much time to waste, though, is there?”

“So get on with it. What do you want?”

“I want the girl’s Miraculous, obviously. Additionally, some kind of transportation would-”

“You’re not getting the Ladybug Miraculous, Henrik. Why don't you give me a demand I can actually take back to the guy in charge, hmm? Something within the realm of possibility.”

Henrik considers this. “All right,” he finally said. “I want the Peacock one.”

Adele’s eyes flashed. “You are not leaving here with _any_ Miraculous, Henrik.”

“Oh, come now, empath,” he said. “How much damage could I really do with teleportation? I just want it so I can get away safely. Give me the Peacock Miraculous, swear you’ll let me transform, and you'll get your girl back unharmed, earrings and all.” He grinned. “And as an added bonus, you'll definitely never see me again.”

Adele sighed and considered the offer. “I'll see what I can do,” she finally said, not sounding happy about it.

“Excellent. And just so you don't try anything, if you're not back in three minutes, I'm killing the girl.”

“Three minutes? That's not-”

“Two minutes, fifty-eight seconds.”

Adele set her jaw. “Fine,” she said. She turned around, walked back past the agents, and headed back inside the base. Once she was gone, Henrik started counting quietly to himself. At first it only infuriated Marinette, but as the seconds ticked by she started to feel more apprehensive, more uncertain that the man who held her was just bluffing. With less than a minute to go, her heart started racing despite herself.

When there were only twenty seconds left, Henrik suddenly collapsed, unconscious, as every false copy of them vanished and his hold on Marinette was broken.

 

* * *

 

“He's over here,” Adele had said one minute earlier, pointing on the security screen.

“You're sure?” Roberts asked.

“Positive. I can't be more accurate without getting closer, though. Get me in the middle of this area unseen, and I'll be able to tell which one is the real one.”

“Excellent. Here.” Roberts handed her a small wand. “That’s pre-loaded with a powerful knockout spell, one use only. Hit the real Henrik with it and he'll be out before he knows anything’s happening.”

Adele nodded, then looked at Paon. “Ready?” He nodded. Adele held her hand up and Paon grabbed it. It was something they'd done over a hundred times before, and though it had been over fourteen years it still felt as natural as breathing. For a quick moment, Adrien got to witness firsthand the ease with which his parents worked together as superheroes.

And then they were gone.

 

* * *

 

It took Marinette a second to realize she was free, that she was safe, and by then Adrien’s parents had materialized behind her, Adele holding some device that was pointed at Henrik’s unconscious form. Marinette took another second to process this.

“How… how did you know…”

“It's funny,” Adele said, still looking down at the man who’d held her prisoner for four years, “he never even used my name. Just ‘my empath’ this, ‘my empath’ that.” She raised an eyebrow. “How the hell did he forget that cheap illusions wouldn't work on me?” She looked over at Marinette, and her expression softened considerably. “Are you alright, dear? I hope I didn't scare you too much earlier, with that whole-” she was cut off as Marinette threw her arms around Adele.

“You saved me,” Marinette whispered.

“Oh,” Adele said, hugging the girl gently. “Think nothing of it. Just returning the favor.”


	9. The Next Morning

The rest of the day was a blur. A happy blur, but a blur nonetheless. The shock, the relief, the post-adrenaline crash, all of it caught up with Adele by the time they reached the cozy safe house where Gabriel, Adrien and Marinette had been staying for the past week. Looking back on it later, Adele would have vague memories of reaching the house, eating, showering, etc. The first clear memory she had, though, was waking up the next morning. The warm sunlight filtered through the drawn shades of the windows, she could hear birds outside, and as she slowly regained consciousness she realized her husband’s arm was around her, and her arms were around her son-she was nestled between the two of them. It was the safest she could ever remember feeling. She couldn’t imagine ever wanting to move from where she was.

Then, ten minutes later, her eyes fell upon the closed door of the bedroom, and she was instantly consumed with a desperate need to get up, open the door, and leave, just to prove to herself that she could. So she kissed Adrien’s forehead and gently disentangled herself without waking either of them, then crossed the room to the door and turned the knob. She breathed a sigh of relief as it opened, then immediately felt embarrassed at the impulse.

Closing the door, she turned back to the room and went next to the suitcase her husband had brought for her. She took her time looking through its contents, running her fingers over all the articles of clothing that Gabriel had clearly put so much effort into selecting. They’d been some of her favorite blouses, skirts, etc, once upon a time, though her memories of them felt fuzzy now. Adele found herself wondering if she’d feel more like her old self once they were on, wondering if it could really be that easy.

It was, it turned out. Partially, anyway.

Gabriel and Adrien were still fast asleep by the time Adele was dressed, so she opened the door once more and entered the hallway. She made her way to the stairs, trying to remember the layout of the house from yesterday. Slowly, she found the kitchen, and Marinette seated at its small table.

“Good morning,” Adele said, smiling gently at the girl as she looked up, surprised.

“Oh-good morning, Mrs. Agreste. Where are, um-”

“I’ve always been a much earlier riser than those two,” Adele answered. “You, too?”

“Um. Not really,” Marinette confessed. “It’s just this week-with the time change, and everything being so…” she trailed off.

“Well, I'm glad you're up,” Adele said. “I wanted to-that is, now that everything’s calmed down considerably, I wanted to thank you for everything.”

“Oh, it’s-”

“Not just for saving me yesterday,” Adele interrupted, “although that alone is a debt I can never repay. But-well, I haven't heard any specifics about your partnership with my son yet, but if it's been anything like the first year Gabriel and I had, I imagine you've saved his life on more than one occasion.”

“Well, yes, but he’s-”

“He means the world to me,” Adele said, “so thank you, Marinette, for being around to protect my son when I couldn't be.” After a pause, Marinette nodded. “I can tell you two care deeply for one another,” Adele continued. “And this is all going to be such a process, I'm sure, for all of us-so I'm really, very truly glad that Adrien has a friend like you to help him get through it. I think that's what he needs right now.” Adele could tell that Marinette had picked up on her emphasis of the word “friend”, and correctly guessed its significance, but she took the disappointment gracefully and simply nodded again.

“Yeah,” Marinette said, “that's what I figured.”

Adele smiled at her. “Don't worry,” she said. “I have a very good feeling about you two. There's time, you don't need to rush anything.”

Blushing, Marinette nodded again. Adele crossed the small kitchen and started rummaging around the cabinets.

“Where do they keep…hmm… is this…” She started pulling items down as she moved through the space, muttering to herself. Once she’d looked everywhere there was to look, she sighed, annoyed. “Four years without coffee,” she muttered, “and all they have is instant? Tea it is, I guess.” She grabbed a kettle off the stove, filled it with water, and returned it to its spot before turning the burner on.

“Oh!” Marinette said suddenly, jumping up. “That reminds me-not coffee, but, um.” She ran to the fridge and pulled out a large box. “It’s been sitting in here a week, but most of it should still be good. It’s from my parents-I told them everything, before leaving, and they-well, here.” She handed the box over to a bemused Adele, who slowly opened it. Her eyes widened dramatically.

“Oh, my God,” she whispered. “This is…” she reached inside, pulled out a macaron, and bit it in half. Her eyes closed of their own volition and she savored it for a moment before quickly eating the second half. “Is this- _yes_ ,” she said, flipping the lid of the box down to look at the logo. “How did they know?”

“Huh?”

“Your parents, how did they know Tom and Sabine’s is one of my favorite bakeries?”

For a second, Marinette’s brain completely short-circuited. “They… they are Tom and Sabine.” Adele stared at her blankly. “That’s,” Marinette pointed to the box, “that’s my parents’ bakery. I designed the logo, actually.”

Adele had a sudden, brief urge to tell Marinette to forget everything she’d said earlier, about taking things slow with her son, and marry him that week if at all possible. She mentally shook it off and reached for another macaron. As she finished it, there was the sound of sudden rushing upstairs, heavy footsteps coming down the stairs, more running, and Adrien had burst into the kitchen. “Mom!” He threw his arms around her happily as she laughed.

“Good morning, sweetheart,” she said, ruffling his hair with her free hand.

“Morning-can I have one of those?” he asked, eyeing the box.

“Absolutely not,” Adele said, and Adrien grinned. “Get your own breakfast, this one’s mine.” He kissed her on the cheek before crossing to the fridge, and Adele and Marinette sat down. Adrien joined them a minute later, and as he began eating Adele took a deep breath.

“Can I ask you, now that everything’s over and settled down…” Adrien and Marinette looked up at her, “what on earth has been going on in Paris?”

Their faces fell as they exchanged a glance. “Oh. Um,” Marinette said eloquently.

“I mean, I know your cover story wasn't entirely accurate,” Adele continued, “but it must have been _plausible_ for it to have worked, and… and the two major Miraculouses in play? I don't even know the last time they were-and Gabriel just flat out refused to tell me, he insisted that I'd been through enough for one day and wouldn't say another word about it. Which was true, I suppose, but it's a new day now and if I don't find out soon my imagination is going to run amok, you know?”

Adrien sighed. “There’s this villain,” he started.

Adele looked confused. “Just one? Fu activated the two major Miraculouses to handle one villain? And even then it's taking over a year to stop him?”

“He, um, has a Miraculous,” Marinette explained. Adele's eyes widened.

“Oh,” she said slowly. “Yes, I suppose that would do it. How on earth did someone manage to steal a Miraculous from Fu, though?”

“He didn't,” Marinette said, bracing herself.

“But he’s got all of them,” Adele said, confused. “Except for the ones he’s given out, and those are all here, except for-” Adele froze. “ _Oh_.” She closed her eyes. “He's got the Butterfly Miraculous,” she whispered.

“I'm sorry,” Adrien said, reaching over and putting his hand on hers.

“I lost four years of my life to keep that Miraculous out of the hands of villains,” Adele said. “And I failed?”

“He hasn't done any permanent damage yet,” Marinette said, somewhat desperately. “Chat and I, we’ve always been able to fix everything so far. I think it would have been much worse, if Henrik had gotten it instead.”

Adele sighed. “What does he want?”

“Our Miraculouses. The major ones.”

“For what?” Adele asked, and Marinette shrugged. “That… but you weren't activated until _after_ this new Butterfly showed up?”

“Hawkmoth,” Adrien said. “That's right.”

“So…” Adele shook her head. “That doesn't make sense. How could he have known you'd be activated in response to him? And how on earth did he find my Miraculous in the first place? And how would he have known to bring it back to Paris? It's-if I didn't know any better, I'd think it was Henrik. I can't think of anyone else who would have known enough about Miraculouses to figure all that out. Or even known what your two Miraculouses are capable of in tandem.” She sighed. “Oh, well. I suppose it doesn't really matter who he is.”

“It might-it could help us find him,” Marinette said.

“Well,” Adrien said, “now that Father’s reactivated his Miraculous, maybe the three of us working together will have an easier time tracking him down.”

“Maybe.” Marinette considered this for a moment. “Are we going to be, like… going on patrols and stuff with your dad now? That'll be… weird, right?” Adrien shrugged, and Adele laughed.

“Oh, I remember patrols,” she said fondly. “I doubt your father would want to intrude on yours, honestly. They're a bit intimate, aren't they?” She smiled to herself. “I remember this one time, your father and I were on top of the Eiffel Tower, and we-” she caught herself, and her cheeks turned pink. “Never mind.” The kettle started whistling, and Adele went over to it to start making tea without another word.

“Actually,” Adrien said, “could you tell me anything about that? Not the top of the Eiffel Tower or anything,” he added quickly, “but just, you know-stories about back when you were superheroes together?”

“I’d love to. Which ones have you heard already?”

“Uh… none,” Adrien admitted. Adele looked over and raised an eyebrow.

“Your father didn’t tell you _anything_?”

“No, he-I don’t know, I think it was too painful for him.”

Adele sighed and turned back to the tea. “I suppose I'm not actually that surprised, but…” she trailed off, shaking her head. “You know, you should have asked your uncle,” she added casually. “I’m sure he would have told you plenty of stories.”

Adrien looked confused. “My-you mean Uncle Jonathan?” he asked.

“Last time I checked, that was the only one you had,” Adele said. She looked up suddenly. “Oh my God, I haven’t checked in four years. Do you have another uncle?”

“What? No, I… I don’t think so. I just-why would Uncle Jonathan know any stories about you two as superheroes?”

“Well, for starters, he’s in over half of them,” his mother replied, carrying three mugs over and sitting down.

“Really?”

“Oh, sure,” Adele said. “The three of us were like this back in the day.” She awkwardly crossed three fingers together.

“Uncle Jonathan was a superhero too?”

“No, no, no, he just-you really haven't heard this? I thought-how long has your father known? About you being the Black Cat, that is.”

“About three months.”

“And you two have been keeping it a secret from your uncle this whole time?”

“Um. I mean, not, like, _actively_. We just haven't seen him.”

Adele stared at her son, shocked. “You haven't seen your uncle in three months?”

“I haven't seen him in four years.”

For a long moment, Adele was speechless. “But…”

“I didn't think it was that weird,” Adrien said, clearly confused and worried about how his mother was taking this news. “He's your brother, and you weren't around, so-”

“But I _told_ him to-if I didn't make it back from Tibet, I told him to help your father keep an eye on you. Make sure…”

Adrien still mostly seemed confused, but Marinette was remembering suddenly, what the Guardian had said when she’d insisted on telling her parents the truth.

_The last time a Miraculous holder revealed her secret to a family member, it… ultimately, it did not end well._

Marinette had a sinking feeling all of a sudden.

“He knew about Tibet?” Adrien asked.

“Well, not until after I left,” Adele said. “I sent a letter. But sure, he knew absolutely everything that-” she froze suddenly.

“Mom?” Adele picked up her mug, staring at it intently.

“When was the last time you saw him, exactly?” Adele asked, and it seemed to Marinette that she was suddenly putting a lot of effort into keeping her voice steady. “Or… or heard from him at all?”

“Um…” Adrien thought for a moment. “Well, you, you know, disappeared, and Father left to look for you, so Uncle Jonathan was watching me, and then about a week later I woke up one morning, Uncle Jonathan was gone, Father was back, and… that was that. Are you okay?”

Adele nodded, although her face was drawn tight. “I’m fi-” she made a small choking noise. Adrien’s eyes widened in alarm and he started to get up, but Adele held a finger up, stopping him. A second later she exhaled, and seemed as though nothing had happened. “Don’t worry about it,” she said instead. “I… I need to ask your father something.” She stood, clutching her mug nervously, and started pacing aimlessly around the room.

“Should I wake him up?” Adrien suggested, after watching her for a while. Adele shook her head.

“No, he’s on his way.” She sat back down at the small table and started tapping her fingers on its surface.

About thirty seconds later there was the sound of footsteps, controlled but rapid, and then the door opened. Gabriel Agreste scanned the room for a second, and visibly relaxed when his eyes landed on Adele. She smiled at him, and he walked over and kissed the top of her head.

“How are you?” he asked.

“Much better than I was this time yesterday,” she said, still smiling. But then she turned away, busying herself with her now empty tea mug. “We were just… the children were telling me about Hawkmoth,” she said, her tone overly casual.

Gabriel didn’t respond; his hand stayed resting lightly on her shoulder, and his expression remained unchanged. Adele, however, angrily slammed the mug down on the table with a loud bang, startling Adrien and Marinette, and buried her face in her hands.

“And there it is,” she said numbly. “The emotional reaction I was really, _really_ hoping I wouldn't sense when I dropped that name.”

“Adele-”

“It's Jonathan, isn't it?”

“I…” Gabriel paused, choosing his words carefully. “I couldn't possibly know with total certainty.”

“So put a number on it. Ninety percent certain? Ninety-five?”

Instead of answering, Gabriel pulled out the empty chair next to his wife and sat beside her. He took one of her hands in his.

“It… fits the available evidence,” he admitted.

“What _happened_?”

Gabriel paused. “You didn't come back,” he said simply. “We disagreed on how to respond to that. Rather bitterly.”

“There shouldn't have been any discussion at all. I was _very_ clear about what I wanted if I didn't make it back.”

“Yes, I raised that point,” Gabriel replied, the deep anger he'd been successfully hiding now starting to creep into his tone. “Repeatedly.”

“And?”

“And he insisted that you weren't dead, and thus were not entitled to the courtesy of a last request. And that… and that even if you were, your mother’s had seniority.”

“Jesus.”

“So he left,” Gabriel continued, “to look for you, or-”

“Or my Miraculous.”

“He thought Nooroo might know something.”

“He didn't,” Adele whispered.

“Yes, I'd gathered. When he appeared last year, wielding your Miraculous, demanding nothing less than the power of gods, I knew he must think you were dead. And that if even he was willing to accept it, it must be true.”

“But I'm _not_ dead. I'm alive, I'm going home. When I get back, when he sees I'm… then he'll stop, right?”

“Perhaps.”

Adele closed her eyes, trying not to cry. “You don't believe that at all,” she whispered.

Her husband sighed. “Adele, I hope I'm wrong, but I honestly don't know how much of the brother you remember is left inside that man,” he said.

“I see.” Adele took a deep breath. “I don’t… I don’t think I’d realized just how much I was looking forward to seeing him again.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Gabriel said, and Adele scoffed. He took her other hand in his and held it tightly. “Adele, listen to me. Yesterday, the impossible happened. We were reunited. After that… after that, there’s nothing that we can’t do.”

After a moment of hesitation, Adele nodded.


	10. Home

They stayed for a few more days. The FBI had a million questions for Adele, but they didn’t want to overwhelm her with them all at once, and they didn’t want the Agrestes returning home before the carefully crafted press release was issued, either. After some discussion, it was decided that Ladybug and Chat Noir’s involvement might as well be public, since their absence had already been noted in Paris anyway and was giving rise to inconvenient rumors, but that Paon’s should stay secret. The official story was that the FBI had earlier that week contacted the Agrestes so they could reunite with Adele as soon as possible, and that Ladybug and Chat Noir had accompanied them and been instrumental in the takedown. Adele’s capture, they would claim, had been nothing more than the senseless tragedy of a woman caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. Any details more specific than that would be declared confidential.

The four of them were gathered in the safe house’s small living room, watching the news together, when it was finally released. It was issued in the late morning in Arizona, which was nighttime in Paris. None of them was sure how soon to expect a response, but it wasn’t a huge surprise when Marinette’s and Adrien’s phones vibrated near-simultaneously about ten minutes in.

“Alya’s frantically texting me,” Marinette reported. “I think she’s got about five alerts set up for any and all Ladybug news stories.”

“She’s texting me, too,” Adrien said, “along with… wow, everybody.” He smiled, touched by the outpouring of support from his friends, though he was still confused. “They can't possibly all monitor the news as closely as Alya does?” he asked Marinette.

“Alya probably sent out a group text.” Before Adrien could respond, his father’s personal phone rang. He pulled it out of his pocket, looked at the number, and answered.

“Hello, Nathalie,” he said calmly, and beside him Adele’s face lit up. “Yes, I can imagine.” A pause. “I certainly would have liked to, but it was technically a matter of international security, so I'm afraid secrecy was-yes, I’m sure it’s very inconvenient.” He sighed. “Alright, Nathalie. Next time I'll be sure to disregard FBI protocol and give you a more appropriately timed heads-up.”

“Tell Nathalie I say ‘Hi’,” Adele whispered.

“Yes. Yes. Yes, that all sounds quite sufficient. I'll have our flight itinerary sent to you so you can plan accordingly. Adele says ‘Hi’.” A longer pause. “I will. Very good. Goodbye.” Gabriel hung up. “Nathalie says ‘Hi’ as well.” Adele grinned.

 

* * *

 

They left the next morning. A car picked them up and brought them back to the small airport where their private jet was waiting, and two familiar faces were waiting to see them off.

“Agent Miller!” Marinette shouted, jumping out of the car as soon as it stopped and running towards the woman who’d taken a bullet for her. She stopped herself before accidentally hugging Miller, noticing the sling just in time. Marinette frowned. “Should you be moving around?”

“Oh, I'm sure the doc’ll yell at me,” Miller said happily, “but I had to see you one more time, didn't I? Anyway, I'm expected to make a full recovery in no time.”

Marinette breathed a sigh of relief. “Really? You're going to be alright?”

“Oh, fine,” Miller assured her. “Bullet went in and out clean as a whistle. Didn't hit a thing of importance on its way through, either. Doc said he couldn't have picked a better trajectory for it if he'd tried.” Miller grinned at Marinette. “I know I keep saying this, but I am _really_ gonna miss having my lucky partner around.”

Nearby, the Agrestes had finally caught up, only to be approached by Agent Roberts.

“It’s been an honor working with you, Mr. Agreste,” he said to Gabriel, who did not seem particularly inclined to return the compliment. “I hope I'll get the opportunity to do so again one day.”

Gabriel raised an eyebrow. “Why on earth would that ever happen?” he asked.

“Uh, well-”

“I was assured this was a one-time thing, and that there would be no written record linking our superhero identities with our civilian ones,” Gabriel continued. “It was the only condition of our assistance. I could not have been clearer about it. You said it wouldn't be an issue at all, that it was standard protocol.”

“Well, yes, that's true, but those of us personally involved still remember, so if in the future some new incident were to arise, it's possible we might reach out-”

“Neither I, nor any other member of my family, will _ever_ be hearing from this agency ever again,” Gabriel said, as though nothing could be more obvious. Roberts deflated slightly and nodded.

“Of course, of course,” he agreed. Adele nudged her husband and he sighed.

“I, ah, cannot begin to express my gratitude to you,” Gabriel said, much more awkwardly.

“You could try a _little_ harder than that, darling,” Adele said. Gabriel sighed, then reached forward and took Roberts’ hand, shaking it in both of his.

“Thank you,” he said. “I am forever indebted.” He abruptly dropped the agent’s hand and left, entering the airport. Before Roberts had begun to recover from his shock, Adele had thrown her arms around him.

“Thank you,” she whispered. “For saving me, for giving me my life back.”

“Oh, well, you made it pretty easy for us,” Roberts said sheepishly. Adele smiled, then put an arm around her son as they walked off.

 

* * *

 

It was a twelve-hour flight, not including a stop in New York to refuel, and an eight hour shift in time zones, so the notion of appropriate sleep patterns was quickly abandoned. At times, only Adele and Adrien were awake, and Adele told her son stories of Butterfly and Paon. Adrien returned in kind, and they compared superheroing in 2015 versus 1995, Adele remarking that she couldn't imagine maintaining a secret identity in an age where every Parisian walked around with a camera in their pocket ready to go at all times.

At one point, only Marinette and Gabriel were awake. Assuming he wouldn't want to converse, Marinette busied herself with sketching, and was surprised to find the man looking over her shoulder a few minutes later. She let him look through her notebook, and he made a few comments that-thanks only to the fact that she'd now spent a considerable amount of time watching how Gabriel interacted with others-Marinette was successfully able to identify as compliments.

“You’ll need to transform,” he told her, and it took her a second to realize he was abruptly changing the subject. “My assistant informs me the press will be in attendance when we finally land.”

“Understood.” Marinette frowned, then looked over to make sure Adele was sound asleep. All three kwami were curled up asleep on her person, she was holding Adrien’s hand in her own, and she looked incredibly content. “Will I be able to? Because of, you know, that device? That the Guardian’s maintaining while we’re gone?”

“Oh,” Gabriel said, annoyed. “I’d completely forgotten. I'll contact Fu and make sure he's disabled it by the time we arrive.”

 

* * *

 

Many hours later, it was the two teenagers who were asleep, Marinette’s head leaning heavily on Adrien’s shoulder. Adele watched them, smiling, as her husband abruptly got up, rummaged through one of their bags, and returned to sit beside his wife. He handed her a pair of gloves.

“What are these-oh.” Adele sighed and looked at the back of her right hand, at the circle of runes tattooed on its surface.

“It's a very light ink,” Gabriel observed, “so I should think concealer would be sufficient in general, but the press will be taking pictures today, and-well, I can't remember if things were like this four years ago, but nowadays the internet will tear apart every pixel of a picture inside of ten minutes.”

“I see,” Adele said, pocketing the gloves. Gabriel traced a finger over the runes.

“Did it hurt?” he asked-and Adele could sense that he was terrified of the answer, but determined to hear it, so she gave it to him.

“Terribly,” she said. “But I managed to break a couple of noses before they were able to hold me down to place it, at least.”

Gabriel lifted her hand and placed a soft kiss at the center of the circle. “I would expect nothing less,” he said. “You are a warrior.”

 

* * *

 

“Nathalie!” Adele ran up to her husband’s personal assistant the second they were off the plane, and threw her arms around the woman. After a moment, Nathalie put her arms around Adele, still holding her clipboard with one hand, and hugged back.

“It is very good to have you back, Mrs. Agreste,” Nathalie said softly, closing her eyes for a moment. Adele released her, still smiling, as Gabriel walked up to them.

“Well?” he asked. Nathalie looked at her clipboard.

“The press is here,” she said. “All of it,” she added dryly. “The extra security I hired should be more than enough to hold them off, however. They’ve already been informed that you won't be making any official statements today, and that your litigious nature is on more of a hair trigger than usual during this readjustment period.”

“Excellent,” Gabriel said, putting an arm around Adele.

“Oh, and the mayor is here,” Nathalie added. “He wanted to personally welcome you and your family home, but I don't think it will be difficult to persuade him-”

“Oh, that should be alright,” Adele interrupted. Her husband looked at her. “I can handle the mayor, darling,” she assured him.

Gabriel looked back at Nathalie. “Well, you heard my wife,” he said, and Nathalie nodded. She looked over at Adrien and Ladybug.

“Where is Chat Noir?” Nathalie asked.

“Oh,” Ladybug said, figuring this was her question to answer, “he needed to stay behind to help the FBI with a few more things pertaining to the investigation. He should be back tomorrow.”

Nathalie nodded briskly and made a note on her clipboard. “I'll be sure to inform the press,” she said, “so that his absence does not give way to unnecessary speculation.” She turned and walked back towards the crowds.

“Yeah,” Adele said slowly, once Nathalie was out of hearing range, “she knows.”

“What? Knows what?” Gabriel asked. Adele looked over at Adrien pointedly. “Nonsense,” Gabriel said, “she couldn't possibly.”

“I guarantee you she knows. Anyway, isn’t that her job, to figure everything out for you?”

“Her job is certainly not to figure everything out and then not _tell_ me anything. Besides…” As the two continued to discuss the matter, Ladybug squinted towards the glass door Nathalie had just gone through, entering the small airport about a hundred meters off.

“I think I see the mayor,” she said to Adrien. “He’s… _wait_. Did he bring-ugh, he did. Great.”

“What's wrong?” Adrien asked.

Before she could answer, a high-pitched squeal echoed towards them, accompanying a yellow blur headed straight for Adele. To Ladybug’s surprise, Adele actually walked towards her, arms open. “Chloe!” she exclaimed, as the girl launched herself into Adele’s arms. “Oh, I'm so happy to see you!”

Ladybug leaned towards Adrien. “Your mom still can't lie, right?”

“Yeah, the FBI didn't know how to-”

“So she’s _actually_ happy to see Chloe. _Chloe_.”

“Oh, sure,” Adrien said. “My mom adores Chloe.”

“Huh.” Ladybug was trying to figure out exactly how absurd it would be for her to feel insecure about this when Chloe finally released Adele and came bounding over.

“Adrikins!” she shouted, running to Adrien in much the same way she always did whenever she saw him-but then she pulled up short, and for a moment actually seemed nervous, before throwing her arms around him.

“I'm-” she gulped, and lowered her voice, “I’m really, really happy you got your mom back,” she whispered to Adrien, and he knew exactly what it meant to Chloe, to say that. So he hugged her back and thanked her wholeheartedly, and then her eyes fell upon Ladybug.

“Ladybug!” she exclaimed, a bit too loudly given how close she currently was to Adrien’s eardrums. She let go of Adrien and embraced Ladybug before the superhero knew what was happening. “Thank you, thank you, thank you! I knew you were the greatest superhero of all time, but I never thought you'd do something like _this_ , it's unbelievable!”

“Oh-well, you know, Chat helped,” Ladybug said, awkwardly hugging Chloe back, and Chloe scoffed.

“Whatever, I'm sure you did all the real work,” she said, as Adele walked over to join them. “Aah, I knew there was a reason I’m your biggest fan!” Chloe hugged Ladybug again, then Adele again, then ran back to her father. Ladybug breathed a sigh of relief.

“Glad that's over with,” she muttered. Adele looked at her, surprised.

“Something wrong?” she asked.

“Oh, um, it's nothing, Chloe’s just…” Ladybug was torn between lying to a woman who couldn't be lied to, and insulting a girl who said woman obviously cared for deeply. “...kind of exhausting,” she settled on. “And her crush gets kind of annoying.”

Adele snorted. “You should try feeling it,” she said. “If anything, the girl’s holding back.”

“Not at school she doesn't.”

Adele looked at Ladybug, confused. “School?”

“Yeah, she’s constantly all over Adrien.”

“Oh, she's not that bad,” Adrien said diplomatically.

Adele still looked confused. “What does Adrien have to do with anything?”

Ladybug blinked. “What does Adrien have to do with Chloe’s crush on Adrien?”

“Chloe doesn't have a crush on _Adrien_ ,” Adele replied, as though the idea was patently absurd.

“Huh? So…what are we talking about?”

Adele looked back and forth between Adrien and Ladybug, who were both staring at her, confused. She cleared her throat. “I've said too much,” she said, and abruptly walked off towards her husband before either of them could respond.

 

* * *

 

Adele honestly wasn’t sure how she’d feel when she laid eyes on the Agreste mansion again. On the one hand, she’d spent the last four years desperately wishing she could return to it. On the other, well…the last time she’d looked at it, it had been in a rear-view mirror, adrenaline still pumping from her fight with Gabriel, and in that moment the place had felt more than a little confining.

But then the next four years had happened, and Adele’s entire concept of “confining” had been violently redefined.

At any rate, it was something of a relief when the car turned a corner and she saw it again, and felt nothing but solace.

“Is there anyone else you’d like to see today?” Gabriel asked, as they pulled through the gates. “Other friends, or…”

Adele couldn’t actually say ‘no’ because there was, of course there was, but there wasn’t any point in mentioning him now, so she just sighed and smiled. “I’ve probably had enough excitement for one day,” she said. “Let’s just relax, and take the rest of it as it comes.” The car came to a stop outside the steps leading up to the front door, and Adele’s knees felt a little weak as she exited the car and started climbing up them.

She’d made this journey a hundred times in her dreams over the past few years-climbed the stairs, reached her front door, felt the cool metal of its handle beneath her fingertips, entered the foyer and breathed in the familiar scent of the home she’d spent so many years building. Now that she was actually doing it, she found herself unsettled at how similar it all was to her dreams. It was hard, even now, not to worry that she was still trapped in the desert and that this was all some trick of her mind. Hard not to worry that four years of isolation and emotional anguish had simply taken their toll and severed her grasp on reality.

And then Adele’s eyes drifted upwards, and she knew everything was real, because there was just no way her brain would have ever come up with _that_.

“Gabriel,” Adele said steadily, one eyebrow raised, “what the hell am I looking at?”

Her husband followed her line of sight up to the macabre portrait that hung at the top of the staircase. “Ah. That’s… well, after you… that is…” He coughed. “I’ll have it removed.”

“Yes,” she agreed, “yes, you will.” Shaking her head slightly, she turned away from it and started to walk through the first floor. She moved slowly from room to room, running her fingers over the surfaces of the tables, the walls, the furniture, reacquainting herself with it all. Her husband and her son followed from a distance, giving her space, letting her settle in at her own speed.

And then she reached Gabriel’s office, and she froze completely.

“You’re not going to make me remove that one as well, are you?” Gabriel asked, as he joined her side and gazed at the enormous gold painting. “I mean, I do see now how the first one was a bit much, and of course it’s no longer appropriate now that you’re back, but this one I’ve grown rather attached to, and it’s not as though-”

“When-” Adele interrupted him, but her voice broke immediately and she couldn’t get more than a word out before the tears were falling freely. She let them, and focused only on getting the rest of her question out without breaking down completely, “when did you paint that?”

“I started it when you’d been missing a year. To the day, actually. It took a while to complete, though. There were days when I lost myself in it, and weeks when I couldn’t bear to look at it. But once it was finished it was just a comfort.” He looked at her, and though his face didn’t betray it Adele could tell he was genuinely nervous. “Do you… do you like it?”

Wordlessly, Adele nodded emphatically, and then she completely lost it. Gabriel wrapped his arms around her, and she buried her face in his chest, still sobbing. There was something incredibly satisfying about it, about crying not because she was hurt or scared or broken, but just because she’d seen something beautiful, caught a glimpse of herself through the eyes of the man she loved, a glimpse of the woman she’d once been, the one she would be again.

Things weren’t perfect, and they weren’t entirely fixed, and they weren’t ever going to go back to the way they’d once been. But Adele Agreste was safe, and surrounded by love, and she was finally, finally home.


End file.
